


My Eternal Sun

by Its_Raineing_Words



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Arguments, Dammit Jim, Drama & Romance, First Meetings, Hurt Jim, Jim is a Little Shit, M/M, Meet-Cute, Meeting the Parents, Mental Link, Mind Meld, Mostly Drama, Mother-Son Relationship, Podfic Welcome, Possessive Behavior, Psychic Abilities, Teen Angst, Teen Romance, Vulcan Culture, Vulcan Kisses, Vulcan Mind Melds, basically all the teen things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-16 10:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 27,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14163147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Its_Raineing_Words/pseuds/Its_Raineing_Words
Summary: What happens when an emotionally compromised Vulcan and an even more emotionally wrecked human meet? Well, you'll have to find out…





	1. A child of two worlds

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in a frenzy of inspiration so if there are any typos or other mistakes please feel free to let me know.

Spock could feel the rumble of the ship surrounding him, he knew none of the others on the ship other than his father could feel it as it was far too soft for their senses. He revelled in it secretly, an emotion that he considered safe. He hoarded it in his mind along with other, less safe emotions such as the warmth that blossoms through his chest when his mother smiles at him or the crackling anger he cannot help but feel when his father admonishes him for allowing his human side to show through. Spock can never understand how his mother doesn’t take his father’s words as an insult against her very nature, he takes it as such and he is only half human.

In fact the very reason that he is stood in the observation deck is because of his father.  
_“I would not have agreed to this transfer to Earth if I had known how it would affect you,” his father said, utterly detached as always._  
_“Explain,” Spock heard his voice as if it was coming from another, it mirrored his father’s tone perfectly and yet…_  
_“You are a child caught between two worlds...I have endeavoured to educate you in Vulcan techniques of emotional control and balance, I have hired the best tutors to instruct you and the best mind healers to assess your progression and yet you continue to fail at every turn.”_  
_Spock felt his entire world lurch at his father’s words. He had known his father had been disappointed in him, in his progress but to hear that fact laid bare had only served to compromise him further, “You feel that taking me to Earth will only make me more emotionally unstable,” it was not a question._  
_“I do but it is too late now. Besides, I am beginning to think that true Vulcan control will always be beyond you.”_  
_“Sarek!” His mother chastised, she had remained quiet until then but apparently that was too much. Spock knew his father was correct, however. While his psi abilities were advanced even for a full blooded Vulcan his emotional control lacked which made him a liability, dangerous. The mind healer that had studied him his entire life had mentioned Kolinahr more than once and his father saw the merits in it but his mother was adamant that Kolinahr was something that he could do if he chose, not something to be forced on him._  
_“No, mother...he is correct. I will never be a true Vulcan or human. I will always be different. I don’t know why, in his wisdom, my father decided to have me. He must have known what sort of abomination would result,” Spock spat the words at his mother like venom who gasped, eyes shining with tears but it was his father that he wanted to hurt. Spock whipped around to look at him but as always his face gave nothing away. Before he knew it he had left the room and was running, he had no idea where he was going._

Spock sighed, looking at the stars around him, caught between the need to catalogue and categorise them and the desire to just look on, entranced. That dichotomy summed his entire life up, he couldn’t help but think. He tried to be a good Vulcan, to meditate and learn and control but they all saw through him: his father, his schoolmates, his mind healer. They all knew what his mother would never admit, that he was flawed, a mistake.  
“Spock?” He turned around to see his mother standing at the entrance, how had he not heard her footsteps?  
“Yes, mother?”  
She walked over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder, he flinched and he could feel a wave of sadness from her at the wordless rejection. Yet another way he wouldn’t never be good enough. Not Vulcan enough for his father, not human enough for his mother.  
“Your father was out of line today, he often doesn’t realise that saying what he thinks isn’t the best course of action.”  
“He was correct, was he not? I am not meeting expectations.”  
“They have no right to place those expectations onto you!” Another wave of emotion, this time anger and indignation. Spock basked in his mother’s love like a Terran lizard in the sun, “Before you were born I asked him a question not dissimilar to the one you implied today: why do you want to have a child with me when it will be half human? Do you know what he said?”  
“No, you never told me. In fact, you have never mentioned this incident before just now,” he replied and she chuckled.  
“Just a humanism, my love. Anyway, he said ‘I love you because you are human, not in spite of it and any child we have will be even better because of it’ and I believe that he still thinks that. When his fellow ambassadors questioned his decision to have you he defended you tooth and nail, he told them of all your achievements with pride shining in his eyes and you know how rare any emotional display is for him. He is proud of you and all you have accomplished, I swear.”  
“I find that assertion difficult to believe. He has never displayed anything close to resembling pride in his son,” he said bitterly.  
“Ah, that is a lesson us humans need to learn, Spock,” she said conspiratorially, taking her hand from his shoulder and nudging him instead, “We crave affection and love. Vulcans do too, of course, don’t think that your need for your father’s love comes purely from my side of things. However, Vulcans are better at picking up on small cues and inferring things from that. You’ve read the papers on the subject.”  
“Indeed. Vulcans, when compared to humans, are 56.34% better at picking up on microexpressions,” Spock didn’t need to list out the percentage as it didn’t noticeably add to his point but he did it because it made his mother laugh.  
“When you add to that their psychic abilities that gives them a very unfair advantage in knowing how people feel without it being said, don’t you think? Sarek and I have had lots of arguments in our time, most of them because I felt unloved. I know how Vulcans are, of course, but as a human I need concessions to be made for me and it took a long time for him to understand that.”  
“I don’t understand what your point is,” He furrowed his eyebrows, turning from her to look out onto the stars again, finding their distant pinpricks of light easier to deal with than his mother’s blatant display of emotion. He sometimes felt like she was taunting him with it, she could express her feelings in a way he never could.  
“My point, my little sehlat, is that he does not make such concessions for you when he should. Now I understand why that is, Pon Farr is a serious business and an emotionally compromised Vulcan is a dangerous being, indeed. However you are not emotionally compromised, you control yourself admirably. You shield yourself properly, you don’t as a general rule show anger. For me, that is enough but for Sarek...he is scared.”  
“Scared?”  
“I have never told you this but when you were very young, no more than four your parental bond to him began to deteriorate and no one could figure out why. Mind healers looked at it and no one could see what was wrong. You would cry and cry and cry, nothing could console you. I would hold you and rock you which usually helped but not this time. I could see how much pain you were in and it killed me to know I couldn’t help, it also killed me to see how seemingly unaffected Sarek was,” Spock nodded, turning to look back at her, “One day I snapped and told him that if this bond couldn’t be fixed you would die, how could he just watch his son dying? I was furious, tears were streaming down my face but I soon realised I wasn’t the only one crying.”  
“What?” Spock gasped, he couldn’t even imagine such a thing. Though given how good his mother was at telling stories he could almost see it. He felt like a child again, being tucked in and told a bedtime story.  
“Yes, my Sarek, your father, Vulcan ambassador to Earth and utterly controlled being was crying because he didn’t want you to die. I could see him trying to gain back control but he just couldn’t, we cried together for hours until suddenly he straightened up and looked at me and without a word he left the room. I didn’t follow but eventually my curiosity won out..”  
“Human,” Spock added, almost snorting.  
“Exactly,” she winked, “Anyway, I looked for him only to find him in your room holding you with his hands on your meld points. You weren’t crying, you were sleeping and though it could have been a trick of the light...I swear Sarek was smiling.”  
Spock didn’t know how to feel, not an hour ago he’d been absolutely irate with his father and now...he didn’t know what he felt. If he had been much, much younger he would have cried but now that was not a possibility. He was about to speak when his mother spoke again.  
“Sarek always wanted you to thrive on Vulcan and he knew that in order for that to happen you needed to learn to control yourself so your emotions didn’t eat you from the inside out. That is something I have never truly understood, the Vulcan need to hide emotions away, but I have seen Sarek’s mind and I know that if he didn’t keep his emotions in check he would be no more than a wild animal but you...I’m not so sure. I often wonder if you’d have been brought up on Earth if you wouldn’t be so sad…”  
“I’m not sad, mother. Vulcans don’t feel sadness,” he regurgitated the words of his father.  
“No use lying to me, my sehlat, I know better. I’m bonded to a Vulcan, after all. When I tell you that Vulcans feel more intensely than humans do, I’m telling you the truth, I would know after all. You’re a combination of the best things from both of us,” she reached up, running a hand over his cheek and as her fingers brushed over his meld points he wished he was six again and learning how to meld so that he could luxuriate in her love again, “you will be a great man and you will find your own way.”  
“You can’t know that,” he protested.  
“Maybe not, but a mother has a certain intuition about her son…” He wanted to ask what she meant but didn’t, he wasn’t sure he could handle her reply, “I can see I’ve given you a lot to think about, so I’ll leave you to yourself. I wish I could say to you that your father will apologise to you but that isn’t something I can promise so I won’t.”  
“I will come back to our quarters when I’m less...distressed.”  
“Of course, take all the time you need.”

Now he was left to his own devices again. It wasn’t particularly late but he knew that given that they were to arrive on Earth tomorrow and that there would be a lot to do that day he needed approximately 4.5 hours sleep to function optimally. He found himself not caring about optimal function at the moment, however, as the thought of returning to his quarters seemed unconscionable at the moment. He pressed a finger against a calming trigger point in his wrist to calm him down, it was a technique that most Vulcans grew out of needing by five but not him.  
“Sixteen years old and still needing childish calming techniques,” he hissed, “and talking to myself...utterly illogical.”  
Spock leaned against the railings in front of the window as he looked out onto the stars again. He had familiarised himself with the stars neighbouring Earth long ago but as he was coming at them from the opposite angle that they were usually displayed in it made them look utterly unfamiliar. Just like the place he was going. Spock wished he felt a calling to Earth but he didn’t, he felt no pull, no kinship to the humans that resided there. In fact he felt utterly non-human, whenever his mother referred to him as human it felt odd to him in a way that being referred to as Vulcan never did which was illogical as he was equal part human and Vulcan. It seemed that his time on Earth would be more difficult than he would have liked without even taking into account that fact that San Francisco, where they were going to be stationed, was practically an arctic tundra compared to Vulcan. Spock sighed again, feeling lost as always.


	2. Sandstorm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you thought Spock's day couldn’t get worse, you'd be wrong...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Two chapters in as many days! This is some sort of record for me.

Spock stayed out on the observation deck for a long time, not really thinking of anything, just trying to control himself. He knew that when he returned to his quarters he would need to apologise to his father for his irrational behaviour and in order to do that he would need to be a great deal calmer than he currently was. His mother’s words washed through his mind and he found them a great comfort. It was difficult to imagine his father engaging in any kind of emotional display, however inadvertently, but he knew she wasn’t lying, she had still been touching him so he would’ve felt it if she had. According to his mother’s theory his father wasn’t truly disappointed with him, he was just scared that he would fall prey to think that had kept him species back all those years, emotion. Spock could understand his logic, after all he had hit his classmate not two months ago and while Spock did not regret his actions he had shocked himself with his power. He had always been told that his human DNA would negate some of his Vulcan strength but that didn’t seem to be the case at all, in fact once they’d run tests after the incident with his classmate they found that Spock was 14.3% stronger than an average full blooded Vulcan of his age and weight. He could see now why his father had become even more distant after learning of that fact. In essence Spock was a strong Vulcan, both physically and psychically but with a weakened emotional control-he was a ticking time bomb as his mother would say. 

Spock found himself walking more slowly than usual on his way back to his quarters, it was illogical to do so but he didn’t speed up. Some minutes later he found himself standing 0.61 metres away from the door to his quarters where he knew his father was, he was stood that particular distance away because to stand any closer would mean that the automatic door would open and he suddenly found himself unready. It was illogical to delay the inevitable, however, so he stepped forward and the door slid open almost-noiselessly.  
“Spock,” Sarek said, looking up from his PADD. The weight of expectation was heavy in the room and Spock found himself wanting to run away again but unable to move.  
“Father,” he replied, not letting even the smallest sliver of emotion show. Sarek just raised an eyebrow instead of replying a wordless ‘well? Do you have anything you wish to say?’ “I...apologise for my conduct this evening, it was illogical.”  
“Think no more of it,” for a moment Spock felt hope, perhaps the man in his mother’s story and the man in front of him weren’t so different after all, “we shall be arriving on Earth in 8.6 hours and your mother needs to rest.”  
‘Ah, so that is how it is…’ Spock thought ruefully. He found himself immensely glad when both of his parents left for their bedroom, leaving him blissfully alone. He had another three hours before he needed to sleep and he contemplated what he would do with that time, the logical thing to do would be to meditate so he made his way to his own bedroom. 

Once he was sat with legs crossed in his usual spot for meditation he did begin to feel calm, that feel deepened when he let his consciousness drift deeper into his mind, away from his body. His mind began to materialise around him, he had been developing this place for the majority of his life; this place would bring him serenity, peace, a place to think, to be alone, to contemplate. It was his escape. The familiar sands began to emerge seemingly from nowhere. Then, all manner of plant life and finally, a creek which babbled and flowed from nowhere and to nowhere. That creek was a source of grief between himself and his father, it was a clear representation of his humanity, tucked away in his mind. Fresh, lush grass grew from it and flowers bloomed...they were not Vulcan in origin. Mind Healers had tried to get rid of the creek but when he tried it flooded and swept the sand away with it, leaving him destroyed so they had to let it back. Yet another thing his father was dissatisfied with.

But now he found himself in his mindscape he couldn’t seem to shut off his steady stream of thoughts, after a few minutes of trying he gave up and decided to assess them instead. He was scared of being on Earth, scared that he would be just as unaccepted there as on his home world, scared of his father and his disappointment. All those things were obvious but something else tugged at him and Spock delved further into his mind, looking for the source. He didn’t know how to place the feeling, it was almost as if it wasn’t coming from him, it was a little like fear and a little like guilt but with something hot like the air in the hottest Vulcan summer in addition. Eventually he found it, in a small, tucked away corner of his mind behind strong shields that he had not looked behind since he was a very young child. Something poked at him, however, and curiously convinced him to look. It took more effort than he expected to get past the shield; T’Pring had obviously taken lengths to assure that her mind was private.  
“Oh…” Spock had no idea that he had spoken aloud, not that it mattered, there was no one to hear him. A torrent of sensations washed over him and it took him a moment to realise what it was.  
Pleasure…  
Once the feeling was categorised in his mind it was as if his mind was pulled out of his own body. All of a sudden the sensations became stronger, the feeling of being full and of needing release, of skin against skin, of scratching nails down a muscled back, of crying out in ecstasy. 

Spock was surprised. Not with his bondmate’s actions but in his own lack of reaction. Everything he had ever been told said that if a bondmate was to be unfaithful it would send the other partner into a murderous rage which would either end in the death of the challenger or their own death but he didn’t feel a murderous rage, instead he felt…  
Nothing.  
That made sense, he supposed, he could tell that the bond was weak. The physical distance being nothing compared to the emotional one. He had often wished that T’Pring could one day grow to love him, that they could share a harmonious bond like his own parents but that was not to be. In an uncharacteristic act of rashness he reached out with mental hands for the bond, weak as it was, and pulled. It should not have come away so easily but neither party wanted it to exist so it almost let itself be destroyed, it began to fray even as he touched it. There was no pain, just a jolt as his mind struggled to cope with the fundamental change. Spock had been so focused on his task that he almost didn’t hear it.  
‘Spock?’ T’Pring was calling out to him though he couldn’t place any emotion in her voice so he couldn’t guess as to her feelings at that moment.  
‘Be with Stonn, he is your telsu, is he not? We were never a match.’  
‘Logical,’ with that he felt the bond being torn from another place and that was what it took for it to come undone completely. Everything around him was shifting, a sandstorm had begun and his vision was blocked out with red. His instincts were to pull him into the protective cocoon of his subconscious but he knew better than to let it pull him down, it would take a lot to wake him from that protective slumber and he had things to do tomorrow. He fought to stand up, a hand over his eyes as he focused on the sensations of his true body, in his room on The Renaissance only a few hours from Earth.

As he came back to his senses he realised that he was on his back on his bedroom floor with tears streaming down his face, he could not control the flood of tears as much as he tried. Spock sobbed, his frame wracked by heaving breaths, he wasn’t used to this level of emotional upheaval. T’Pring had lent him a great deal of stability, he realised, he had been rash in his desire to end the bond but he did not regret it. He would not let himself be made a fool of by T’Pring and Stonn anymore than he already had been, being...cuckolded by them would be too much even for him. T’Pring had never so much as let their fingers brush in the most chaste of embrace in the ten years they’d been bonded. They had engaged in intellectual conversations, of course, Spock found her company if not stimulating not tiresome which was all he had been lead to expect from a bond. The fact that she was engaging in sexual relations with Stonn, who had made his schooling a painful experience in every way was unconscionable. What about Pon Farr? A traitorous voice in his mind supplied. What will you do when the fever rages and you have no one? You will not find a mate on Earth, you will die. 

Wiping the last of his tears away he moved himself to his bed, checking to see if he still had enough time to get the requisite amount of sleep he needed to function optimally the next day. Spock couldn’t help but think of what his mother would say at this moment.  
‘Well...this has certainly been a fuck of a day, hasn’t it?’  
He couldn’t help but agree with his mother’s imagined words.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is slightly shorter than the last one but I feel that it ended in a good place. As always, constructive criticism is welcome but comments and kudos is even more so! ;) 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


	3. Rain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock has his first outing into San Francisco which goes about as well as could be expected, depending on your expectations, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is a little bit longer so I hope you enjoy it, think of it as my little gift ;) also be grateful that my work has been mind numbingly boring as of late which has given me time to write this

Spock felt the slight jolt of the ship as it began to slow down which brought him out of his fitful slumber. It took him a moment to remember the events of the last night but as he reached into his mind, looking for a bond that was no longer there, it reminded him of when he was a child and he would poke his gum with his tongue after he’d lost a tooth; the slight pain but even more than that, the nothingness. He discarded the feeling quickly, however, not letting it settle inside of him. 

He made his way out into the shared space where his parents were both already sat eating breakfast. His parents had been engaged in a discussion about the coming day’s events but when Spock entered the room Sarek fell silent which prompted his mother to stop speaking as well which, if Spock was to take an illogical look at it, was extremely awkward. His father eventually broke the silence, presumably after realising that Spock would not do so.  
“I have been made aware that your bond with T’Pring is no more,” he said and Spock was momentarily shocked that he knew before realising that T’Pring must have told her parents who in turn told him, probably so she could bond with Stonn. It was only logical.  
“Affirmative. The bond was not viable.”  
“Clearly,” Sarek turned back to his food, not bothering with even another glance.  
No more was said and Spock took a seat next to his mother who just smiled and gave him a big helping of Plomeek soup, no doubt to try and make him feel better, and as illogical as it was it did work somewhat. Now that he was left to his own thoughts he couldn’t help but give consideration to the future, his future more specifically. Pon Farr was the least of his worries. It had been instilled in him by his father from an extremely early age that his bond with T’Pring lent him emotional stability and that without it his emotional control would be even weaker, that he would be even more dangerous than he currently was. He didn’t feel dangerous, however, his classmates certainly didn’t have any compunctions with antagonising him to the point of violence. Well, he couldn’t help but think ryely, Stonn had certainly learnt to regret that particular course of action. Spock thought of the satisfying thud of his fist connected with Stonn’s cheekbone, the even more satisfying second blow which caused his lip to split and blood to flow like the green liquid inside the many desert plants that had kept his people alive for milenia.  
“Spock,” his father warned, clearly picking up on Spock’s emotional imbalance.  
Spock didn’t reply, just bowed his head in acknowledgement and focused on calming his breathing.

Breakfast was an even more solemn affair after that and Spock found himself remaining silent as they were landed on Earth. Not that it mattered or was even noticed by anyone but his mother who shot him an uncomfortably emotional worried look but thankfully didn’t press the issue. 

Spock’s first day on Earth was a flurry of activity. First all their belongings were brought to where they would be living for the foreseeable future, according to his research it was of average size for a dwelling in San Francisco but it left much to be desired when compared to their house on Vulcan and the fact that it had not been sold which comforted Spock, at least this time on Earth would be temporary. It was only logical to want to return to his home planet where his body functioned optimally, after all. There was a constant chill deep in his bones that he couldn’t get rid no matter how warmly he dressed, even with the heating turned up to an adequate temperature it still settled around his ribs and wouldn’t let go. The air was too thin, the sky too blue and the clouds...the fact that there were clouds in the first place was most disconcerting to him. As they sat down for their evening meal Spock realised he had barely spoken all day, he was growing far too introspective-it wasn’t good for his stability.  
“I didn’t realise how much I’d missed Earth. I hope it rains tonight,” For a moment Spock thought his mother was speaking to him but it was his father that replied.  
“It is logical to have an attachment to one’s home planet,” he said, echoing Spock’s earlier thoughts and Spock was suddenly reminded of something his mother had said three years ago, ‘You and your father are too similar, you rub each other the wrong way. Hopefully in time that changes, you both need to learn to accept each other for who you are-your father most of all.’  
“You’re right. I also think I’ll relish the opportunity to speak Standard. Vulcan is a beautiful language but there really is nothing like speaking your mother tongue.”  
His father didn’t reply and he could see her slightly deflate at the sudden end of the conversation and so he spoke, “My Standard is more than adequate however I think that having some conversation practice will prove to be most beneficial.”  
“Of course! I have tried to instil a good amount of knowledge into you along with your normal education, however speaking to a variety of people will help no end. Perhaps you will even finally learn to understand idioms...”  
“They are illogical. I will have to memorise then if I am too understand them,” he replied, feeling a little more at ease.  
“Rote memorisation does not equal knowledge,” she said in her approximation of a Vulcan speech pattern before switching to Standard, “Besides, it’s more fun to learn about the culture behind the idioms.”  
“Fun?” He repeated, the phonemes of Standard remained utterly foreign to him despite the fact that his mother had spoken it to him for his entire life. She said it gave him a ‘cute accent’ but he failed to see how speaking a language defectively was in any way ‘cute’.  
She was totally unaffected by his skepticism, “Yes, fun. I also think you should try and make some friends, you know, put yourself out there.”  
“Vulcans do not have friends. In addition, where exactly would you want me to place myself?”  
“Oh shush, you! You’re as bad as your father,” her eyes danced with mirth and that irrational annoyance filled his chest again but he couldn’t place its origin, “I know for a fact Vulcans have friends, I have a good deal of Vulcan friends myself. And it’s only logical that you stay your time on Earth to experience your human side and find yourself.”  
Spock found himself wanting to frown in confusion but forced his face to remain impassive, “I know my own location, mother.”  
She laughed before growing oddly somber for seemingly no reason, “Do you?” 

Spock would never understand humans, he thought, not even his own mother. Their complete lack of logic and order made them proclive to great spouts of emotion; as far as he could tell from what his mother had relayed to him on the subject the human mind was akin to a massive ball of yarn, a tangle of memories and associations and thoughts that combined in unpredictable ways which was what made them so unstable. Vulcan emotions ran far deeper but given the fact that all Vulcans strictly regimented and confined their emotions from the age of two it made it so that any emotion could be traced back to its source and dealt with appropriately. The fact that humans let their emotions go for the most part unchecked unnerved Spock deeply, how could they survive with such chaos inside of them? Either humans were much more strong emotionally than Vulcans or much weaker and he did not have enough data to posit which.

As he lay in what would be his bed for at least the next six months he found himself oddly unable to sleep. Logically he knew that he was perfectly safe, as an ambassador to Earth his father was kept secure at all times and that extended to his family also, in addition the bed was of excellent quality. That left him with only his emotions as the reason for this disturbance, it was becoming a concerning pattern. Spock had endeavoured to meditate for his usual 2.5 hours before bed but tonight he was only able to achieve 1.2 hours of satisfactory meditation, the the other 1.3 hours were spent driving away unwanted thoughts and feelings. The grass that surrounded the brook in his mind had also begun to spread and given that this brook and the surrounding flora were his mind’s way of expressing his human heritage the expansion was cause for worry. Perhaps his bond with T’Pring should not have been cut. Then again, he couldn’t help but think, surely knowing my betrothed is engaging in sexual intercourse with another man would also prove to be detrimental to my stability, perhaps even more so than the lack of a bond. 

Having only achieved 2.4 hours of sleep, just over half of what he needed to function optimally, he made his way down to the kitchen to eat breakfast. Everything felt wrong as he walked: the air, the gravity, his surroundings, his father-all of those things combined to give him a most disconcerting feeling. He asked his mother about it privately after yet another silent meal, more silent than Vulcan custom called for.  
“Oh that feeling is to be expected,” she said in Standard and Spock immediately wished that he hadn’t asked her to speak to him in Standard to improve his ability in the language. His mother had an odd talent for twisting the very nature of Vulcan and peppering it with highly emotive language as well as metaphors that made no sense. However she spoke even more illogically in Standard which as he got older he starting to find frustrating instead of interesting.  
“What do you mean?” He had to ask that question to his mother 67% more than usual in the short time he’d spent on Earth. It made him worry about relating to other humans because, according to her at least, she was extremely even-tempered and logical: ‘20 years of living on Vulcan will do that’ she had said, ‘though most people aren’t like me, I will admit.’  
“You’re homesick.”  
“Mother I do not have any symptoms of sickness except a mild case of insomnia which I hardly think constitutes-”  
She held her hands up in a gesture he had to think about for a moment before remembering that it represented surrender or acquiescence, “What I meant was you miss Vulcan, you’ve never left before and you’re having to adjust to new circumstances and well as the lack of the things that you’re used to.”  
“Oh…” he mulled over what to say, her statement was loaded with emotion as always and he found that he didn’t know how to react. He knew what he would have said if his father had been there, or one of his former classmates but because it was just him and his mother he found himself at a loss. It struck him then that something had fundamentally changed, “Your theory has merit.”  
If she was disappointed by his lack of emotion she didn’t show it, “Mothers have a way of knowing these things,” she tapped her nose and once again Spock was at a loss as to what it meant, “Now, let’s discuss our schedule for today.”  
“Our schedule? But I was under the impression that you were to be attending meetings with father all day.”  
“Oh fuck that! Excuse my French,” She replied, laughing.  
“I have heard you say that phrase before, it’s used to apologise for the use of expletives, is it not?” He asked, inwardly feeling proud of having remembered at least one of those highly illogical Standard phrases.  
“Indeed, well remembered.”  
“As you know Vulcans have an excellent memory, in fact,” but then he was interrupted yet again but he found that he wasn’t annoyed by it for some reason.  
“I know, I know. Just let your mother be proud, will you? Anyway, back to the subject at hand. I thought that it would be interesting to go and see the FMSE or Federation Museum of Space Exploration. I’m sure it would be interesting for you to learn about the human perspective of space travel.”  
Spock nodded, “Indeed.”  
“And besides, I want to have a nice day with my favourite son.”  
“I’m your only son,” he pointed out.  
She laughed again, a music lilt that Spock constantly found himself surprised by his ability to induce. Vulcans did not laugh and so she had been the only person in his entire life that he had made laugh. He had decided at the age of four that it was not at all unpleasant and he found himself agreeing with his own assessment from twelve years ago, while complete not Vulcan, he enjoyed amusing his mother. When he was younger he would debate with his father on any number of subject completely logically while his mother was in fits of laughter and though neither he nor his father could ever comprehend why that was they both silently decided that he indulge her. It made the fine lines around her eyes deepen however her laugher made her look younger which was completely illogical. 

The weather in San Francisco remained uncomfortably cold however it did rain briefly which not only made his mother smile, but let him look at the differences between rain on Vulcan and Earth for himself. On Vulcan it rained very infrequently but when it did it was a torrent of water which would go on for days at a time and many things had to be cancelled such as school or work and in addition there were often severe delay in public transportation or even closures. It struck Spock as illogical to not prepare for the rains when they happened with regularity but every time they happened it seems as if it took the government by complete surprise, he suspected that they thought it too expensive and effortful to their infrastructure for what only amounted to a few days of inconvenience per year and perhaps they were right in their thinking, Spock did not think so. On Earth however...he had learnt about monsoons, of course, which he understood as they were akin to phenomena on Vulcan but what he had just seen was nothing like that. His mother had looked up to the sky as they were walking to the FMSE, why she insisted they walk when they had a driver he had no idea, and exclaimed.  
“Oh! It looks like it’s going to rain,” and indeed it did, clouds the colour of charcoal rolled across the sky, obscuring the sun as they rose above even the the tops of the buildings which in and of themselves were entirely foreign and fascinating to him.  
“We should find shelter,” he said, scanning the area for a suitable place.  
“We’ll be fine, Spock. It only looks like it’ll shower,” she replied.  
“Shower? I know the meaning of this Standard word but not in this context,” he said, feeling odd about admitting a fault but also knowing that admitting such faults was the only way to improvement.  
“It means to rain lightly,” she explained, “I have certainly missed the feeling of rain on my skin. Those torrential downpours on Vulcan are far too heavy to stay out in for any length of time.”  
Having seemingly waited for his mother’s explanation it began to rain. Almost immediately he began to feel embarrassed, he had no idea how to act in such a situation. All the other people around him were rushing to get under shelter or had opened up what he guessed to be umbrellas which reminded him of the parasoles Vulcan women used to carry two hundred years ago. His mother had tipped her face up to the sky however and in a fleeting moment of curiosity he did the same but immediately put his face down when a drop landed in his eye. He blinked rapidly for a moment before his focus settled back on Amanda.  
“Lovely, isn’t it?” She asked happily.  
“I’m cold,” He grumbled by way of an answer.  
“Well that’s because you’re not used to the weather but soon you will be.”  
“I highly doubt that given my physiology, I am accustomed to high temperatures as you know,” he said and he could hear two humans ducked under the same umbrella nearby talking about him, though he knew they didn’t expect him to be able to hear them given that Vulcan hearing is significantly more sensitive than human hearing.  
“Wow I’ve never see a Vulcan before!” One gasped.  
“Shhh! I know, but it sounds like he’s having an argument with that woman,” The other one hissed in reply.  
“Don’t be silly, Vulcans don’t argue.”  
“Well what does it sound like is happening, then?”  
After that they were out of his hearing range which he was thankful for. He was used to being closely scrutinised for having human DNA, a deficiency in the eyes of many, and now he was being judged as a Vulcan which was both flattering and irritating.  
His mother’s voice brought him out of his reverie, “Look! I can see the sign for the FMSE now! And the rain has stopped, you have no reason to be grumpy now.”  
Spock decided not to dignify the grumpy comment with a retort and instead took note of the fact that the instances of his mother raising her voice unnecessarily had increased by 30% already, it was a worrying trend should it continue, “Affirmative, it should take us 3.56 minutes to reach taking into account your shorter stride.”  
“My human sensibilities are telling me to be offended but luckily for you I know better, just take that into account when conversing with other humans.”  
“I don’t understand, I was merely pointing out a fact,” he said, yet again feeling confused. He strongly disliked feeling so unknowledgeable and out of place.  
“As you know humans are illogical and part of that is that we don’t like our flaws pointed out to us.”  
“It’s hardly a flaw, I am merely taller than you as well as younger and in addition Vulcans are stronger than human, all of these facts mean that I have a longer stride and faster gait than you. That is no insult, surely.”  
“When meant the way a Vulcan means it, no,” she said, beginning to walk faster, “But humans often say something and mean something else entirely. For example, your comment just then to a human could easily be misinterpreted as you insulting my height by referencing my shorter stride.”  
Spock nodded, commiting the information to memory. He could not see the logic in being offended by the truth, surely that would be tantamount the lying to one’s self.  
“Here we are, Spock,” Amanda said as they stepped through the entrance and into the relative warmth of the building. He hadn’t realised how cold he was until that moment. She grabbed his arm tightly all of a sudden, making him jump, “Look up!”  
He wanted to frown in confusion but didn’t, “Why?”  
“Just do it!”  
Spock looked up and for the first time in 8.34 years, he gasped.


	4. Museum

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock meets Jim, it depends purely on your feelings about rockets and fights if you feel that this is a good turn of events or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry it’s been so long, coursework has been bogging me down but I felt the extraordinary pull to writing a could not resist so I finished this up. It’s not as long as the others but I left it on a rather exciting cliffhanger (if I do say so myself, which I do). Hope that wasn’t too beastly of me.

The rocket that was strung up above their heads glinted in the light that was shining through the huge glass windows, the rain had stopped and the clouds were beginning to part. It was a beautiful sight and for the first time since he was a toddler Spock felt a true affinity for humanity as a whole and not just for his mother. Humans might be frustratingly illogical but they were ingenuitive, curious, creative and so many other things that lent them the ability to strive for greatness and often achieve it.  
“I told you that you’d like it here,” Amanda said, smiling and walking towards the entrance to the main exhibit.  
Spock didn’t reply and just followed behind her, still glancing at the rocket as it sparkled in the sunlight. The technology was alien to him, having only been on either Vulcan space crafts or, as was the case on his trip to Earth, modern day Federation space crafts. It was curiously crude and yet...and yet it was brilliantly made, ‘beautiful’ a tiny corner of his mind thought. He shook his head minutely, as if to shake the thoughts out of his mind.

As they made their way into the museum Spock was struck by the size of the interior compared to the apparent size of the exterior, it threw him off for a moment before realising that the majority of the museum was housed in what he had thought to merely be an unrelated adjacent building. Curious, he thought, on Vulcan museums were usually in one building specifically built for the purpose though now he thought about it he remembered his mother saying something about the museum being expanded. Therefore it would follow that where they currently were was the original section and the additional section was the relatively modern building he had assumed to be unrelated. He was tempted to ask about it but it seemed to him like a stupid question, illogical. What did it matter? 

They walked through the exhibitions, his mother providing a running commentary without really expecting him to be listening which was a relief because he found himself unusually occupied. Spock had always enjoyed his schooling because it had challenged him and he knew that it would give him the resources to achieve great things however now he found that the path that had been prescribed to him at birth didn’t feel right anymore. It was logical, no doubt, it would be the most sensible use of his academic talents but it wasn’t something he enjoyed thinking about. What would he become? An ambassador to Earth like his father? It would probably help matters that he was ‘from both worlds’ as ridiculous as that thought was. A scientist? He enjoyed experimentation and indeed had a laboratory in his room on Vulcan but the thought of spending his life locked away felt disappointing.   
“Spock!” He was dragged forcefully out of his thoughts, “They have a video booth which is apparently playing a comprehensive history of Earth space travel both pre and post warp. How exciting!”  
“Mother?” He cocked his head.  
“Alright, my feet hurt and I want a coffee and I know that you would hate to sit in the museum cafe because there would be too many humans all emoting at once,” she smiled slyly, “and besides, ‘you’re already sufficiently nourished at this time’, correct?”  
He nodded, something told him that this was his mother’s frustratingly human way of hinting to him that she wanted time alone, “Very well, I shall watch this video.”

With that he simply turned away, ignoring his mother’s huff of amusement as he made his way over to the entrance to a dark room. Most strange, he thought, yet another thing Vulcan museums don’t have. What is the point in watching a video on something if the same information can be gleaned from simply reading the plaques on display, surely that’s what they're there for. The room was smaller than was comfortable for him, especially as he realised he wasn’t alone. It was too dark to make a full assessment but it seemed to him to be a human male of medium build with light hair of some description, most likely a similar age to himself. The human turned to look at him briefly and Spock saw his eyebrows raise slightly, most likely the boy assumed Spock couldn’t see him as his face showed his emotions starkly, like a wild splash of paint on a blank canvas. He sat down without looking at the human again, though he found himself wanting to.

The video was just as uninteresting as he had predicted it would be, the narrator was reading off facts that Spock was already memorised on his walk through the exhibits while clips of various rockets being launched played over the narration. Soon enough Spock found the urge to look back at the human too great and subtly turned his head. The blonde was watching the screen in fascination, eyes wide and breathing slightly elevated. It puzzled Spock and usually that would bother him but it didn’t, instead he found himself unable to look away. The light from the screen played off of the blonde hairs that were falling into the boy’s face, the tiny reflections of light made Spock’s eye fight to focus. The urge to simply let his vision fade as his eyes relaxed, to simply see colour and shape and nothing of consequence. Or perhaps that was the only thing of consequence in this room, it was certainly keeping him occupied.  
“If you don’t stop ogling at me I’ll fight you, I don’t care if you’re supposed to be genetically stronger than me or whatever.”  
The sudden commentary from the boy made Spock lurch and flush a dark emerald, he was at a total loss, “Vulcans are on average three times as strong as humans when comparing to specimens of comparable age, gender and weight.”  
“I’m not scared of you,” He spat back, shifting in his seat in a way that unsettlingly reminded Spock of Stonn.  
“I am not threatening you, I am merely stating the truth.”  
“Stating the obvious, more like.”  
Spock bristled, “It appeared as if you did not know and so I enlightened you,” in that moment he abhorred the sound of his native Vulcan tongue as it was so apparent in his Standard, it made him sound crude and uneducated, “sometimes the obvious needs to be stated.”  
The boy scowled, shifting in his seat yet again, why did humans always have to be in a state of motion? And spoke, “Fuck it, and I was trying to be well behaved today.”  
A moment later Spock was tackled to the floor, his head knocked painfully against the floor and light flashed before his eyes. A fist landed against his cheek and he was lost..

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always I hope you enjoyed. Rest assured, the next chapter will be up soon. I can’t promise when but soon. Work is still an evalanch around my ears but I’m wading though if it, if you'll forgive the inexact metaphor.


	5. The Creek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You never know with Vulcan telepathic abilities, do you....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another short one, but I figured you'd prefer not to be kept in suspense for much longer. And the chapter tied itself up nicely there.

The creek was babbling and almost overflowing, the sands were being blown about by some almighty gust. A sandstorm, Spock thought vaguely, I must get indoors immediately. Then logic prevailed, he was on Earth, in San Francisco-there was no sandstorm. Then where was he?  
WHAT...THE ACTUAL...FUCK?!?!  
The sound reverberated throughout the entire landscape, making the shrubbery shake with its magnitude. Spock, reflexively curled in on himself in pain before standing again, this was his mind and there was an intruder. He could not see the human but he could sense him all around his and through him, like electricity. He summoned the human to him in a corporeal form, not wanting to be at a disadvantage.  
“You are in my mind.”  
“I repeat,” this time the words were at a normal volume, “what the actual fuck?”  
“It seems that when you...hit me...we were taken by my body into my mental scape. Potentially as a defence mechanism, though I have not heard of such a thing.”  
The human looked shocked before snorting, “So we’re in your mind? It’s boring though that’s not exactly a surprise. Though if I was to guess what the inside of a Vulcan’s head was like I would have guessed like a computer, not this...”  
“I doubt you’ve given the subject any in depth thought.”  
Instead of being annoyed like Spock had expected the human simply laughed, “You’ve got me there. I tend to actually go out and socialise on the weekends instead of whatever it is you do.”  
“Experiments.”  
“I didn’t actually expect an answer.”  
“So I’ve gathered…” Spock felt flustered again and had to make the effort not to project his emotions to the human. Jim, his name was Jim, Spock realised now that he had access to his mind.  
“What was that? I felt you in my mind. We’re inside your mind and then you went inside mine. That’s kinky…” Jim said, smirking to hide his genuine discomfort. Now that Spock was ‘tuned into’ Jim’s emotions he could sense them clearly.  
“I apologise, that was unethical of me. I just...you...your presence is very strong. This is more than any meld I have ever experienced.”  
The sky began to crackle with thunder, wind whipped and howled around them, “You’re scaring me, I want to get out here…”  
Spock tried to pull himself to consciousness but couldn’t, it was like Jim was keeping him trapped in his own mind. He had never even heard of that happening outside of a self induced healing trance. How could another being, let alone an ostensibly psi-null one like a human, possibly do this?  
“I’m trying,” Spock said, grunting with the effort.  
GET ME OUT NOW!  
Jim was gone, replaced only by wind and his deafening psychic laments. Spock was beginning to panic but he knew with sickening certainty what he had to do. He had been taught kashek nashiv-tor as a child but it was only meant to be used in self defence and in life or death scenarios which this, no matter how terrifying, was not. But how else would he subdue this human? At that thought Jim’s presence grew more scared and agitated, he didn’t need to hear Jim’s thoughts to know that he only had seconds before he was attacked himself. 

Spock felt himself dissolve into himself, permeate his entire mindscape, searching Jim out. When he reached him Spock latched onto him and forced his psychic energy into him, he was met with a fierce resistance but he could tell that Jim had no idea idea what was going on and so Spock quickly took him down and into full unconsciousness. He didn’t pull himself to wakefulness immediately, instead he simply let himself feel what it was like to have a being unconscious inside his mind. Jim still seemed to crackle with some sort of psychic electricity he had never seen before but now he was...docile, small. Suddenly the absolute power he had over the human grew terrifying and he pulled himself to consciousness.

They were both still on the floor alone and Spock’s internal clock told him that twenty minutes had passed since his mother had sent him away, surely she would be coming to collect him now. He quickly pulled himself out from under Jim and backed away before logic prevailed again. He couldn’t just leave him there on the floor, there was CCTV footage of them both entering the room even if there were no cameras inside. On the other hand...what exactly did he expect to happen when Jim awoke? It wouldn’t be unreasonable in the slightest for him to call the authorities and it wasn’t like Spock could prove that Jim had attacked first after all. He debated just leaving him there but that would have been both cruel and stupid, even if it was the easiest option. Spock crouched and touched a hand to one of Jim’s psi points, he knew that his parents engaged in some level of psychic communication and exchange though it was all through his father as far as he knew, so he assumed he could use the same points that his father touched on his mother with this human. A gentle frisson of energy pulsed through his fingers and into the human, not enough to harm but enough to jolt him awake. 

Intense blue eyes snapped open and for a moment everything stopped. Spock looked at Jim, Jim looked at Spock.  
“Jim, I...I don’t know what…”  
“How the fuck do you know my name? This isn’t happening,” he was beginning to hyperventilate, “fuck this.”  
With that Jim clambered up to his feet unsteadily and practically ran away though it wasn’t like Spock was going to chase him. Instead he composed his features and went to find his mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed, do let me know if there are any typos as I don’t have a beta or anything like that. I'd also be interested to see where you think the story is headed. I’m trying to foreshadow without being too obvious, hopefully that works.


	6. The Nexus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock can't sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if this is a little bit of an uninteresting chapter but I have a few things that I’m building up to which were hinted at in this, some more explicitly than others. And as always I hope you will enjoy it otherwise.

Sleep eluded Spock as he lay, perfectly still, on his bed. The sheets were pulled over his shoulders and though the heating in the apartment was adequate he still felt cold. The events of the day had given him much to think over, he’d never melded with anyone other than his parents, his mind healers and T’Pring. Jim was completely different, he was a powerful storm, a raging fire, he was uncontrollable power. Jim scared Spock. It was ridiculous, it’s not like Spock would ever see him again but still...that kind of power certainly wasn’t safe. There were still traces of Jim in his mind, almost like a link. The traces drew Spock to them and he found himself hoarding them away to a special corner of his mind, ostensibly to mull over but even that logic didn’t hold out for long. 

Spock had never given attraction much thought, given that he had been bonded so the topic was moot. He knew Vulcan could physically feel it, he’d read pre-reform texts after all but he never applied that knowledge to the people around him. On Earth he was inundated with evidence of Human sexual attraction and their expression of it, couples kissing in public, holding hands, hugging-it was enough to make him very uncomfortable. How could they conduct themselves in such a manner? Even though he was aware of the difference in culture and that human did not treat touch with the same gravitas that Vulcans did he still found it odd. 

There was one small scrap of Jim’s thoughts that had remained in Spock’s mind which he hoarded far more jealously than the others. It was Jim’s feelings as he had been dragged into Spock’s mind, the shock, the awe...and something else. It reminded Spock of the one time he had eaten chocolate, it was intoxicating. To Jim, Spock’s mind had been a solice, something fantastical and unique-like nothing he’d ever seen before. Those feelings had been quickly tamped down and replaced by anger and fear. Still, it was intensely interesting in a way Spock couldn’t articulate. It was Human sexual attraction, surely, and it was so different to anything that had been described in pre-reform poetry-it was almost...spiced. Spock internally bristled at the imprecise description but talking about chemicals and bodily functions fell short. He had never experienced anything like that in his life, nothing he had felt compared and he found that he wanted it. Spock wanted to experience it himself. It was completely different to any other thoughts he’s had about an emotion, usually he wanted to shut them away, minimise them but with this...he wanted it. He thought about the human’s mind, about his dynamic it was and it was painfully beautiful and made any interaction he’d had with T’Pring’s mind fade into nothing in comparison. 

Spock shook his head slightly, still staring blankly at the ceiling, none of those fanciful thoughts mattered. He would never see Jim again, the chances were infinitesimal, small enough to be dismissed entirely. 

Clearly there was no point in attempting sleep any further so he got out of bed and moved quietly to his meditation mat and sat down, cross legged. Spock didn’t bother with lighting any candles or incense and simply slipped into the first layer of meditation. He wasn’t even relaxed enough to enter his mindscape but he found that it was immensely calming and his thoughts, which had been a torrent, finally subsided. The first layer gave way to the second and the the third and soon enough he was in his mindscape. The brook was still there, if slightly larger, and the flora surrounding it looked healthier. Spock turned away from the brook and started to walk, technically he had no need to as he could just summon what he wanted to himself but it helped to keep him focused so he walked. 

It took him a while to get there but eventually the desert gave way to a nexus of sorts, it had more in common with a computer than with the rest of his mindscape and he thought of Jim’s assumptions for a moment-torn between amusement and hurt. This was the only part of his mindscape that bore any resemblance to a computer. As he approached it, it began to unfurl and the brilliant light of it almost made him look away for a moment before he remembered it was his mind and so he had no eyes to fear for. Inside he could see his mental bonds to his parents and the weaker ones to his more distant relatives as well as the mesh of micro-bonds that made up his connection to every other Vulcan. As Spock looked more he started to frown, something was different and he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was-there was a new fibre, golden and bright, but Spock couldn’t tell what it was. It wasn’t connected to another being as far as he could tell but it was connected to something powerful and he had no idea what it was. He knew that the Vulcan mind could sometimes connect to things other than another humanoids and healers were often needed to rectify it, though usually that connection was between children and their pets. This however...Spock had no idea what it was though it did go some way to explaining his lack of ability to sleep. 

Once he’d found out what he needed to know he began to pull himself out of his meditative state. Spock unfolded his legs from their crossed position and looked at the shadows that the rising sun was casting through the blinds, watching them crawl slowly up the wall was oddly fascinating and it kept him mostly occupied for for the thirty or so minutes until his internal clock told him it was time to present himself for breakfast. His mother had told him that now that he was ‘almost seventeen’ it was time for him to start helping out around the house more and so he’d been tasked with making breakfast for himself and his parents twice a week. His father had added to his mother’s chore by demanding that it be ready before they made their way to the kitchen to eat at 7:00 hours, his logic being that Spock had no work or schooling to bother him and so waking up earlier would not hinder him in any way, though his mother had disagreed slightly but not pressed the issue. Spock sighed and made his way down to the kitchen.


	7. Like father like son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock had some difficult conversations.

Spock walked unhurriedly around the kitchen as he prepared three meals. French toast for his mother who had taken to eating mostly human food as the novelty of being on Earth hadn’t worn off for her as of yet, plomeek soup for his father who never wanted to eat anything too flavoursome at breakfast and a guava smoothie for himself. Guava being the fruit that tasted the most like something that could be found on Vulcan and a smoothie because his stomach was still oddly unsettled and he didn’t think he could handle anything more for the moment. He tipped some protein powder into the smoothie to raise its calorific content, most foods from Earth simply didn’t have the nutritional value to sustain the Vulcan body optimally. He could replicate and number of Vulcan dishes, he supposed, but he had been specifically instructed to cook breakfast from scratch and additionally it would not be the same. Replicated food was bland and always had a slightly odd texture, it would be worse than having eaten nothing at all. 

Seemingly on que as soon as he’d set out the food he heard the sounds of his parent’s footsteps; the tired shuffling of his mother and the strong and physically economic steps of his father. Spock looked up from where he was finishing setting the table.  
“Greetings,” He said, laying a spoon next to his father’s soup before taking a seat.  
“Good morning, Spock,” she smiled and he felt guilty for no reason he could discern, “I hope you slept well.”  
They ate in silence, as was Vulcan tradition, and as they ate Spock analysed his mother’s expression. She was still worried about him, that much was obvious. When she’d seen him rush up towards her and practically beg her to leave, feigning tiredness, she’d seen through it right away and had asked repeatedly what’s wrong to no avail. For the entire trip back to their apartment she hadn’t stopped asking but he’d remained silent and simply retired to his room as soon as they returned without giving her a second glance. It was inexcusably rude and he could see that but he just looked at her out of the corner of his eye and Spock knew he wouldn’t apologise even as the guilt continued to eat away at him. 

She kept shooting him worried glances all throughout breakfast as Sarek studiously ignored them both, assumably perturbed by the blatant emotional display. Spock drank his smoothie slowly, knowing that even after he was finished he wouldn’t be allowed to leave and the thought of just sitting there with nothing to occupy him made him uncomfortable. The sound of his mother’s fork clicking against the plate that had come with the apartment made him feel sad for some reason, it was completely foreign and made him feel out of place around his own family. Spock wondered if his father felt anything similar, he doubted it given that being away from Vulcan for prolonged periods was part of his job and no doubt he wasn’t prone to such childishness as homesickness or fear of a new place. 

Eventually his parents finished their food and his father left for the embassy, only stopping briefly to kiss Amanda goodbye. Now alone she spoke as they washed the dishes together.   
“Will that smoothie be enough?”  
“It is nutritionally adequate.”  
“But it’s not exactly food, is it?” She pressed, looking concerned. Spock was about to contradict her when she carried on, “You’ve been behaving oddly ever since the trip to the museum.”  
“Three days is hardly enough time to formulate such a hypothesis,” he felt far too seen for his comfort.   
“That’s exactly what I mean! You’re in a bad mood and I don’t know why, and no, it’s not about being on Earth before you say that and yes, Vulcans can get just as pissy as the rest of us before you deny it.”  
Spock sighed, deciding that a small piece of honesty would hide a larger lie of omission, “I’m merely having trouble adjusting to life on Earth.”  
“Oh fuck off, Spock!” Spock looked at her with wide eyes, “You are being ridiculous right now and acting far too much like your father for my comfort.”  
He had no idea how to reply, “Please, mother. I just need time to myself.”  
She sighed and nodded, “I’ll leave you to yourself then, Spock but please try to do something to cheer yourself up.”  
Spock was about to reply but she just gave him a sad look which shut him up. He wasn’t completely sure what he’d done wrong but it was as if his natural state of being always upset his mother and irritated his father, there was nothing he could do. 

Spock just stood there in the kitchen alone and not entirely sure of what had happened. After a short while he shook himself out of his thoughts an dance his way to his bedroom, surely some more meditation was in order. He shouldn’t need to meditate this often but he did and there was no use obsessing over it, it would be illogical. He shuffled his way over to his room and closed the door firmly and in that moment he wished he could lock the door. Even though he had told himself he’d meditate he found himself unable to so after a ten minutes of attempting it he went to go get his PADD, maybe that would go some way to distracting him, even if momentarily. 

As he sat neatly on his freshly made bed reading various scientific articles, trying to look for something to interest him enough to warrant further research, his PADD trilled with the sound of a notification. Spock furrowed his brow as he read the message.   
“It took me a while to find you, Vulcan security is better than I thought.”  
Who could have sent this message? Stonn? Plausible, perhaps he wanted to continue to antagonise and bully him from the other side of the galaxy. Logic soon prevailed, however, if it was Stonn the message would have been in Vulcan, not Standard and he wouldn’t have referenced the security as being Vulcan in particular.   
“Who are you?” Spock replied, fingers trembling minutely from the adrenaline as he wracked his brain.   
“Surely it would be obvious, you know me so well after all. Or, I assume you do. You knew my name without me telling you.”  
His chest turned to lead with dread, “James T Kirk.”  
“The very same. I have questions.”  
Spock did too, though they were questions that he would prefer to leave unanswered. He just wanted to pretend none of this had ever happened and now this infuriating human had tracked him down. His PADD pinged again.  
“Don’t ignore me.”  
“Is that a threat?” Spock felt uneasy about this whole thing, he knew that he wasn’t exactly blameless, he had used kashek nashiv-tor after all.  
“Ha! That’s rich of you. But no, I just want answers. I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them, got it?”   
“While your attempts at intimidation are valiant they will not work on me. You would be best served to forget that this incident ever happened.” Spock looked at the message and realised how much he sounded like his father.  
“Oh fuck that! You said when I was in your mind that it was more intense than any meld you’d had before. Is that like sex or something?”  
Spock balked, “No it is not ‘like sex’ as you so crudely put it. It is the joining of two or more minds in a shared mental scape.”  
“Sounds like sex to me. Anyway…that was a meld?”  
“I’m not sure, it was unlike any meld I’ve had before, however it does share the overall characteristics of one.”  
“You’re being vague, Spock.” The use of his name annoyed Spock, it was overly familiar from someone who was currently interrogating him for information he didn’t have.   
“I’m vague because I do not know myself. This is odd.” Jim should not have been able to do most of the things he had done, his own mother was able to sustain bonds to both himself and his father but they were facilitated through his father because she was not able to do so herself purely because humans were known to be psi-null for the most part.   
“You know more than me. Surely you can see how this would be difficult for me.”  
Spock did, indeed, vividly remember Jim’s fear and confusion at the utterly foreign sensation of being ripped out of his mind. He remembered his mother telling him that she’d cried the first time it had happened to her and she had been informed in detail of what was going to happen and had consented to it whereas Jim had no such luxuries. Not for the first time in the last three days he felt guilty.   
“I did not do it purposefully, I cannot help you. What happened will not cause you lasting harm, you have merely been left distressed by sensations that are foreign to you.”  
“What about the headaches?”  
Spock frowned, “Headaches?”  
A few minutes passed before Spock received a reply.   
“Yes, the headaches. They’ve been nonstop for three days. Why do you think I found you? Do you think I want to talk to you when you’re the one who did this to me with your weird Vulcan mind tricks? No! My mind is not the same, everything is wrong, You’ve ruined everything!”  
Spock was about to reply when Jim sent another message, “fuck you this isn’t over” 

He stared at his PADD blankly, completely unable to process anything. His mind was a blur of guilt, anger and curiosity. He didn’t want to reply so he didn’t, he just turned his PADD off and sat on his bed which had been rumbled somewhat since he’d last paid it any attention.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim ended up sounding way more like a villain than I intended but I just imagine that as him trying to come off scary when in reality he's curled up in bed typing away furiously.


	8. Getting some air

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock actually leaves the apartment of his own volition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than I thought but it’s almost 2000 words so hopefully that makes up for it.

The next few days were filled with unease. Every time his PADD pinged he expected it to be Jim and when it wasn’t he was filled with relief and disappointment in equal measure. Spock was almost tempted to message Jim himself that would be blatantly ridiculous since he’s not supposed to even want to speak to him in the first place. Nevertheless he found the situation incredibly vexing. There was no way he’d be able to speak to his father about it either, what could be possibly say? It was his fault that he was in this situation, he was the one that accidentally melded with an unsuspecting human and now that human had tracked him down. 

Spock sighed as he looked over to his PADD where it was resting on his desk. He had completed his work set by the Institute on Vulcan already and he had the rest of the day to himself, though the free time was more of a curse than a pleasure. He had taken to walking around San Francisco, mostly to please his mother but partially help him acclimate to Earth. It was constantly well below his optimal temperature and while it was a simple matter of raising his internal temperature it burned calories much faster and given that he was already an adolescent with a higher caloric need this was not desirable. Instead he had taken to wearing layer upon layer of clothing; an undershirt and shirt as well as a sweater and coat with gloves and a hat. It made him stand out even more but he didn’t particularly care. 

The wind whipped across his face and stung his eyes and he fought back the urge to shield his face with his hand. There was a bench hidden behind a building two blocks away, Spock knew this because he’d been there three times in the past four days. He picked up his pace, no longer content to keep in step with the others walking alongside him. Walking against the wind was annoying but he ignored it in favour of cutting along a patch of grass as a shortcut. 

Once he was sat down on the bench he was momentarily at a loss for what to do. He had planned to walk to the bench and sit there for half an hour before making his way back to the apartment, that way he would’ve been gone for an hour which was enough to stop his mother from looking so forlorn. As he sat he felt the urge to take out his PADD and check for messages but he refrained, what was the point? He’d waited days for Jim to message him like he’d said he would and nothing. It was disconcerting to say the least, like waiting in the dark, knowing that you were about to be hit without knowing where or when the blow would come. Spock folded his hands neatly in his lap and focused on his breathing, it wasn’t exactly a meditative exercise, it was simply meant to take his attention away from his urge to check his PADD. It didn’t work very well as the feeling that there was something he needed to look at still plagued him. 

Spock growled lightly to himself as he opened his eyes and reached for his PADD and unlocking it quickly. There were a few notifications, most of them from various scientific journals he was following but there was one from an unknown code and Spock was not surprised in the slightest to see what the message contained even as his heart beat out a painful rhythm in his side.  
“Spock, I said this wasn’t over and I wasn’t lying. I’ve taken a few days to think over what I should say and here it is: I know this isn’t your fault but that doesn’t matter, this is still on you. My headaches haven’t gone away, if anything they’re getting worse and when I was forced to go to the hospital they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Painkillers don’t help, darkness doesn’t help, nothing helps. You have to help me.”  
As Spock read the message he analysed his options. He could ignore the message or he could reply, those were the main options which then split off into other paths depending on Jim’s reaction. Spock didn’t particularly like the element of uncertainty, it made him nervous, there were no amount of statistics or equations that could help him this time. He sighed as he thought of how to reply, he didn’t want any of his inner turmoil to show through-it will be utterly disastrous and besides he wasn’t about to let this human know that he’d rattled him.  
“These headaches are not something that I’ve ever heard of before. Though, given their persistence it is some cause for concern I still don’t see how I can help however. At this point if you feel that I can help you then I’m prepared to try, if you would like to meet to discuss this in person then that can be arranged. Like I said before I don’t see how I can help but at the very least I’m sure that there are some mind healers that I could put you in contact with and they should be able to help you or to at least ease your symptoms. You said before that I done something to ruin your mind and there is nothing purposeful that I’ve done you are right in that I’m on it no you said before that I done something to ruin your mind and though there is nothing purposeful I’ve done you are right in that the accidental meld I performed could have done some harm. I apologise for this and upon further reflection I realise that it is my duty to help to remedy the problem that I have caused.”  
Once he typed out and sent his message he puts his hand away and set off back for his apartment where he knew his mother will be waiting for him, wanting to asking about any adventures that he’s got enough to along the way but there were never any. Not that she was ever anything less than irritatingly proud of everything insignificant thing he does. 

Once he typed out and sent his message he put his PADD away and set off back for his apartment where he knew his mother would be waiting for him, wanted asking about anything interesting that had happened though he never had anything to say. If part of the reason that he switched his PADD off and set off back to the apartment so quickly was that he wasn’t prepared for Jim’s reply then no one but him would know about it. The dozens of people that milled about around him were utterly oblivious as were his parents, and Spock was eager to keep it that way. His problems at the Institute were public knowledge, the fact that he would be ‘question’ about his hybrid status was entirely logical, after all, and if Stonn was a little more...insistent about it than the rest. Well, that just proved that he was an exceptionally inquisitive mind. At least that was how the public saw it. Everyone knew about Spock’s shame including his parents who had tried to stop it multiple times but to no avail. He would not let them know of his weakness again, not if he could help it. 

As he opened the door to the apartment his mother poked his head round the door to the kitchen.  
“Hello, Spock! You’ve come home just in time for dinner. I’ve decided to make some carbonara, I’ve missed Italian food like you wouldn’t believe.”  
“Hello, mother. That is satisfactory.”  
She rolled her eyes and smiled, “I’m happy that I have your approval.”  
“Are you being sarcastic?” It was something Spock had difficulty discerning, there was only ever a slight change in tone to denote it and so it often went over his head, so to speak. It frustrated him that no matter how many articles he read on the subject, his mother’s sense of humour would always elude him. He could enjoy it but never as openly as she would like and he could never respond in kind. Even his father managed to have his sarcastic quips and witticisms which could make her laugh.  
“You’re learning, soon you’ll be a better conversationalist than me,” Spock gave her a disbelieving look and she spoke again, this time in Vulcan, “You’re certainly smart enough. If you put your mind to it you could accomplish anything.”  
The unexpected use of Vulcan, his native language and the language he was used to speaking to her in made his heart ache in his side and for a brief moment he was overpowered with the longing to be back on his home planet.  
Spock replied in Vulcan, “I acknowledge your compliment,” and then in Standard, “Thank you, mother.”  
She smiled at him, “Dinner will be ready in,” she looked at the clock on the wall behind her, “fifteen minutes.”  
He nodded and strode off to his room, not wanting it to be too obvious that he wanted to check his PADD but he had a feeling that to a diligent observer his quick pace would give him away. 

He toed off shoes and took off his sweater, he had already taken off his gloves and coat at the door, the apartment was kept at a much more comfortable temperature; though slightly less than a normal Vulcan household due to his mother’s biological needs. As expected there was a message from Jim.  
“Well shit, I didn’t expect you to give in so easily. Thanks, I guess...I need you to sort out whatever shit you put inside my head that is giving me these headaches. I can feel something there. And there’s some other stuff I want to talk to you about because given Vulcan’s are a psi species you might know some stuff. It’s something I want to speak to you about in person, though.”  
“I assume you’d like to meet in person, then.”  
The reply came a few minutes later, “Tomorrow at 1 outside the museum.”  
Spock had to force himself not to reply, there was nothing more of note to be said therefore any further conversation would be pointless. 

His thoughts wandered to what he would do when he met Jim again, he needed to be prepared. He was glad that the human had wanted to meet in a public place, that at least boded fairly well for his safety. Spock found that he had no idea beyond that, however. Jim expected him to fix whatever it was in his mind but he was no healer, the chances that he could ‘fix’ it were incredibly low and it bothered him. Researching the topic brought up mixed results, some of which could reasonably be applied to their situation but most of it was for people who had accidentally formed a proto-link during some sort of stressful situation like a natural disaster or war or the like. And they were all Vulcan and so having a psi-null being included was a factor that Spock could not easily account for.  
‘Not that Jim is psi-null,’ a small acidic voice told him, ‘You saw what he did.’

He was jolted out of his thoughts by his mother’s shout.  
“Dinner’s ready! Sarek won’t be home so it’ll be just the two of us, I’m afraid,” ‘I’m afraid’, yet another humanism Spock could not understand. The words and the presumed meaning were totally different and thus incongruous. He sighed, he was beginning to suspect that he would never fully understand human behaviour if his mother and Jim were anything to go by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....the pace is starting to pick up! Please let me know you think I’m handling Spock and Jim's interactions so far. I’m trying to strike a balance between wariness and attraction, not that Spock would have any idea that's what he's feeling. I also hope that Jim isn’t coming off as too unlikable. I have my plans for what’s going on, on his end but as this is told from Spock's point of view the majority of that won’t be seen for a good while yet. Anyway, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!


	9. So we meet again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to pick up.

Uncharacteristically for San Francisco the sky was cloudless, though that didn’t make the temperature any less inhospitable to Spock. He was still wrapped up in three layers and even then he still felt mildly uncomfortable as he waited outside the museum’s entrance, keeping an eye out for blonde hair. It frustrated him that so many humans had blonde hair as it made him jolt every time he saw some. 

Spock had arrived half an hour early to the museum so that he could get settled in his environment before having to interact with Jim, he wanted as few stress factors as possible. He was beginning to regret his decision after ten minutes of steadfastly scanning every passerby incase it was Jim, this was more stressful than just arriving on time, if anything. He didn’t have to wait long, however, as Jim arrived ten minutes early himself.   
“Hello, um, thank you for showing up. When you didn’t reply I figured you wouldn’t,” Jim said by way of greeting. Spock took the time to properly analyse the human; he looked haggard with dark purple circles beneath his reddened eyes and a greyish pallor to his skin which reminded him of whenever his mother would get ill.   
“You appear to be in less than peak physical condition,” Spock replied, “Also why would I bother replying to you? It would serve no purpose.”  
“Letting me know that you would show up, maybe?”  
“If I wasn’t going to attend I would have told you.”  
“Would you?” He sighed, “This isn’t what this is about. I’ve been having these killer headaches, more migraines really. Well, pluralising them is wrong because the headache has never stopped so it’s one big headache. It’s shit.”  
“I can imagine,” Spock nodded, he felt a physical demonstration of agreement would help smooth this conversation along.   
“I just need you to undo whatever you did and we can move on with our lives. Well, undo what you did and answer a few questions.”  
“Your list of demands is ever growing, it seems.”  
Jim ducked his head slightly, “You do owe it to me, I mean, come on!”  
“That is not true, if you hadn’t punched me then this wouldn’t have happened.”  
“Ok, that’s fair enough. That hadn’t been a very good day for me, which I know isn’t an excuse but still, and I just-let myself let my anger out on you and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry, it was wrong of me,” Spock just stood there, stunned. Whatever he had planned on Jim saying, this had not been it. After thirty seconds of silence Jim began to look awkward and spoke again, “Is there anywhere we could go that’s private? I don’t think either of us wants to do that ‘meld thing’ in public and the sun is making my headache worse.”  
Before Spock could stop himself he spoke, “My home is a short distance from here. My father is at work and my mother had gone for the day to visit friends. I have the house to myself.”   
Jim smirked, “Not the first time I’ve heard those words. But it is the first time they’ve ever been said so we can go and do some psychic shit.”  
Too late to back down now, he thought reluctantly, “Is that acceptable to you?”  
“Yeah, I mean, if you try anything I’ll call the cops on you faster than you can say mind meld so…”  
Spock furrowed his brow in confusion before understanding dawned, “If you would not feel safe at my house we could always-“  
“No! Your house is fine. Just don’t murder me,” Jim replied hastily.  
“I shall endeavour not to.”

The walk back to Spock’s apartment was silent. He knew his mother found prolonged silences awkward but he wasn’t sure about Jim and besides, he wasn’t about to make any effort to accommodate him beyond what he had done already. As they approached the apartment complex Jim gasped.  
“Wow...I knew your dad was an ambassador but shit, this is really something else. I didn’t even know a shithole like San Francisco had places like this,” he said reverently.   
“It is adequate,” Spock almost stopped speaking there but something pushed him to carry on, “though it falls short of my home on Vulcan.”  
Jim smiled briefly before focusing on trotting up the stairs, he got to the door before Spock but realised that there was a scanner so he just shrugged and turned to look at Spock as he made his own way leisurely up the stairs. Spock stood in front of the scanner, a few seconds later it spoke.   
“Identified as S’Chn T’Gai Spock, please present authorisation code.”  
“Ek’te’kau zehlanaya 2487654983. I have a guest with me.”  
“Code recognised, enter S’Chn T’Gai Spock and guest.”  
“Was that Vulcan?” Jim asked a moment later as they entered the lobby which was empty. His father had made sure to rent an apartment that had as few members of staff wandering about as possible and instead focused more on technological security which Spock was grateful for.   
“It was,” he anticipated the follow up question and decided to answer it right then, “I merely said the words ‘authorisation sequence’, it’s the closest Vulcan translation for authorisation code.”  
“Oh, ok, how long did it take to memorise?”  
Oh, so he’s making an effort to converse, Spock thought, not quite knowing how to deal with the situation, “A minute or so. Vulcans are adept at memorisation among other things.”  
Jim snorted, “Yes, I am aware. Bit of a stereotype, though, so I didn’t want to assume.”  
“Well not all Vulcans have the same abilities of course,” he said in acknowledgement, “but the majority do possess an aptitude for memorisation of some kind whether it be medicine, mathematics, gardening, the arts...it could be anything.”  
“Oh, that’s interesting.”  
Spock felt a bit awkward and so he didn’t reply and instead strode over to the elevator and pressed the number for his floor which was not quite at the top but too high for to be practical to use the stairs. 

The rest of the walk to the apartment was in silence which Jim seemed content with which struck Spock as slightly odd. From what he remembered from his experience with Jim’s mind, he was an extremely talkative person, the type to find silence uncomfortable and have the urge to break it. He suspected the human was quiet because of his headache as he could see him wincing occasionally.   
“Wow, the decor is not what I expected,” Jim commented as he looked at the various paintings and sculptures dotted throughout the apartment, “it’s pretty.”  
“What were you expecting?” He asked dryly, the human impression of Vulcans was very characaturish-almost more like robots than living beings which he supposed was how they wanted to be perceived even if it was inaccurate  
“Less, I suppose.”  
“Well, it was mostly because of my mother.”  
“Really? Is she an interior decorator or something?”  
“No, she’s human.”   
Jim gaped at him, “Wow...that’s...unique.”  
If Spock was completely human he would have snorted, “Indeed. I am the only human/Vulcan hybrid so I am extremely unique.”  
“Does that makes your mind different, then?” Jim asked as they made their way to Spock’s room.  
Spock considered the question for a moment, “It does. But then everyone’s mind is unique because individual people are unique. Certainly human aspects are present in mind.”  
“Oh ok,” Jim dropped the subject which Spock was grateful for because talking about his deficiencies made him uncomfortable, “Now we’re here what do we need to do?”  
“I must confess that I’m not entirely sure. If it would not be too distressing to you, perhaps we could initiate another meld so that I could assess your mind. I might be able to find the cause of the headaches and fix it,” he replied, sounding more confident than he felt.  
Jim shifted from foot to foot as he looked around the room and Spock remembered that was a gesture to communicate feelings of awkwardness in humans. Spock motioned for him to sit on the bed, he was aware that it was a little bit over familiar of him but he only had one chair which was in front of his desk and besides, he’d need to be sat near him in order to perform the meld anyway. 

They sat a good distance apart and Spock soon realised he’d have to move closer to be able to touch Jim’s psy points and so he made a calculatedly human gesture and shuffled closer. In that moment he wished, not for the first time, that he had better control over his emotions so that he could just ignore them-if he was able to do that then the overpowering nervousness and self-consciousness wouldn’t be an issue. Tentatively, Spock reached his hand towards Jim’s face, watching his expressions closely. He wasn’t going to do anything that Jim wasn’t ok with, not after last time. Jim wordlessly nodded and Spock brought his hand closer. 

This meld was different from the last one, firstly because they were both expecting it and secondly because they were both relatively calm. At first it was easier to just take them both into his mind so that he could collect himself and prepare. He’d melded with his parents and healers and had been taught how to enter someone’s mind and had done the bare minimum of practice but that was totally different to having someone right in front of him in the moment. The fact that he was untrained and undisciplined only made it more difficult and intimidating; it was akin to going into the mind of a pre-reform Vulcan Spock realised because while Jim had some psychic ability he had no mental control, a scary thought. 

The desert winds blew steadily, a pleasant breeze that made Spock ache for his home world. Jim was considerably calmer and so didn’t need to be coerced into a solid form, instead he was stood directly in front of him taking in the landscape around him.   
“Now that the meld has settled I think that it would be best if we attempt to enter your mind,” Spock said after a beat of silence, still very aware of the awe that Jim was projecting.   
“You said that a meld wasn’t like sex but everytime you talk about it, it just sounds dirty as fuck. Just so you know.”   
Spock felt a little flustered which annoyed him, Jim was only trying to rattle him, “Regardless of what it sounds like to you it is now time to try and fix your problems like you wanted me to.”  
“Yes,” Jim at least had the decently to look a little chastened, “Speaking of...my headache has gone. Literally as soon as we began the meld it went away. Strange…”  
“Indeed,” he agreed.   
“Well, you’re right. We should head off into my mind if we’re going to fix it,” Jim cocked his head to the side, “Wow...you really are nervous, aren’t you?”  
“You can tell?” In that moment Spock hated that mental communication got rid off most of the barriers that stopped him from just saying whatever he thought.   
“Well yeah...I mean, it’s obvious. I can feel what you’re feeling and I can pick up a few of your thoughts but nothing solid-just snatches of things. Why did you think it was so distressing for me last time? One second I was punching you in the face, the next I was literally inside your mind feeling all your angry and fear and confusion.”

Instead of replying Spock just focused on following the link back from his mind and into Jim’s. As he left his own mind he was struck by how different it felt to anything else he’d experienced. Of course he’d had mind melds with other people and had entered their minds but it was always controlled and clinical-nothing like this. Even the link between their minds was stained gold with Jim’s presence, it was utterly fascinating. 

There was no mental landscape as such, most likely because it had never been cultivated, but there was something...some sort of coalescence of thoughts and memories. Spock found that he could navigate through it and in a way he found it easier because there were no shields and instead of things within the mental landscape serving as metaphors for things everything was simply laid bare. 

Spock could tell that Jim felt a lot more comfortable being in his own mind so it didn’t surprise him that he heard his disembodied voice start to speak in that same overwhelming psychic rumble.   
“So...what now?”


	10. Tendrils

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys conduct another meld, it goes about as well as you'd expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long absence. Life has been kicking my arse lately.

He really should have given more thought before this whole debacle had begun but he had wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening which was highly illogical but shutting himself off from his problems was something he was prone to, yet another failure. Regardless, here he was inside Jim’s mind and he needed to hurry up-there was no point in waiting around. The sheer alien power that surrounded him made him stop in his tracks, any research he had done fell short of the reality in front of him but he didn’t let himself stop long. Instead he pushed forward, feeling for any traces of himself. The pain was another thing that distracted him, it was all encompassing and terrible-Jim hadn’t been lying when he’d said the headaches were too much for him to bare. It was a whirlwind of fire, a storm that raged on infinitely and it took him a long while for his training to kick in and for him to dismiss the pain as merely the firing of neurons and as such, nothing to be acknowledged. It left him shaken.

It didn’t take him long at all, in fact, he found his presence throughout Jim’s mind. Spock was unsurprised by Jim’s headaches-to have someone else’s mind literally crushing and encompassing their own would surely be psychic agony. Now that he had found the source of the problem he set about removing it. But…  
He found it wasn’t working.   
No matter how hard he tried the tendrils just would not move. Perhaps he was being too forceful, Spock thought to himself as Jim started to grow worried, and instead he tried to simply sheppard them, direct them into one spot. His plan was to get them pooled together so he could remove them easily. Spock was surprised to find that the tendrils moved easily under their new guidance, he could sense himself within them and it seemed that they recognised him too and now that he wasn’t trying to remove them, they listened to him easily. It was illogical to think of them as having any sort of consciousness but that was how he thought of them. Jim didn’t help with his comments.   
“Oh...so I was right, you had really messed up my mind. Fuck...those things are everywhere-it’s enough to give anyone commitment issues.”  
“What are you talking about?” Spock asked, exasperatedly.   
Jim did the mental equivalent of a sigh, Spock knew in that way that you do when you meld with someone that Jim was sighing though there was, of course, no sound. Normally he found that he couldn’t tell the difference between the different sighs of his mother, a sigh of happiness sounded exactly like a sigh of annoyance. But because he was inside his consciousness, Spock could feel Jim’s annoyance mixed with amusement. He found Spock’s lack of understanding amusing while still being frustrated at the lack of proper communication, for a human emotion it made a surprising amount of sense.   
“I have finished moving the filaments of my mind in to one place,” he explained, focusing on that instead of his growing discomfort at being surrounded by Jim’s presence, “it should now be relatively easy to remove them now.”  
“If you say so...well? Go ahead.”

So Spock did. Or more accurately, he tried to. The mental filaments had condensed themselves into a chord, it reminded Spock of his bonds to his parents and his bond to T’Pring when it had existed. At this realisation he became filled with fear.   
“What’ve you done? It feels different, odd,” Jim asked and Spock couldn’t figure out how Jim was feeling.  
“I confess that this seems to be a bit beyond me. I’ve condensed my mental presence in your mind which might help you. I think that it would be prudent to check if the headache has gone away,” Spock didn’t wait for Jim’s reply and began to pull himself out of his mind, there was a slight resistance from somewhere but Spock ignored it. 

Once the meld had ended and Spock had calmed himself down he looked over to Jim who was staring off into the distance.   
“Jim? How are you feeling?” The question felt quite impotent but it was all that he could think of saying.   
“Better, my headache is gone but…”  
“But?”  
“I feel strange, I can’t describe it. I feel like the meld hasn’t ended completely, I mean, the last time I was in agony but I knew that it had ended but this...” Jim wasn’t looking at Spock, in fact he hadn’t moved his head at all. It was making Spock feel uneasy, “I can’t even describe it.”  
“I think that this is something that should be taken to a healer, this is beyond my ability to solve,” Spock breathed, chest squeezing. He was becoming nervous, as an unbonded male going through maturation he was especially at risk for developing spontaneous bonds-that was why Vulcans were bonded as children, to prevent both spontaneous bonds and a lack of bond for when Pon Farr. How could he have been so stupid as to not see those tendrils of his psyche for what they were? Because Jim was human? He was living proof that bonds between Vulcans and humans were viable. They must now have some sort of proto-bond. That hadn’t been Spock’s aim when he’d tried to relieve Jim of his headaches but there wasn’t anything he could do now. A healer would need to be brought in...what would his father think of all this? Or worse...his mother? Spock didn’t even want to speculate. 

Jim just stared at Spock for a long moment before finally speaking, “Yeah we’re not doing that, the headache has gone which was all I wanted. There’s no way in hell that this whole...debacle is going on any longer than it has to.”  
“But this has to be stopped!”  
“Does it? Seems pretty harmless to me. We can go our separate ways now,” Spock just stared in shock, at a loss for words. Surely Jim must not grasp the gravity of the situation. Before Spock could decide what to say Jim was already leaving the room, “I won’t bother you anymore...thank you for helping me. I’ll see myself out.”   
Spock just stared. He knew he should go after Jim but he just didn’t, part of him was too scared about a possible confrontation and part of him just wanted it to be over. He could just dissolve it on his end like he did with T’Pring. The breaking of bonds was despicable in Vulcan culture but given that he himself was an abomination right down to his genetic makeup he found that he didn’t really care anymore. He’d spent so long trying to fit into the Vulcan standard and it clearly wasn’t working, he couldn’t fit the human one either so clearly he was just going to be an outlier, an outcast.

The door to the apartment closed and Spock sighed, knowing he’d be alone for another three hours. Time he desperately needed to centre himself if he was going to present a calm facade for his overly caring mother and uncomfortably perceptive father.


	11. Momma's boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock has a lot of thoughts and decides to be proactive about them for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the massively long wait, work has been a bitch and I’ve been a tad distracted with other stories but I got this done and it’s a little longer than my usual updates. I hope you like it!

His whole life was spiralling out of control, it seemed to Spock. Only a few months ago he was on Vulcan and while he’d been miserable at least he’d known what was expected of him. Here, however, he had no such luxury. His Standard had improved a great deal as his mother had convinced his father to speak it around the house which meant that he didn’t speak Vulcan anymore as he certainly didn’t have any friends to video call or message. Spock missed speaking Vulcan, he rationalised it by saying that it was only instinctual for him to want to remain close to his culture so that it could protect him as it had done for Vulcans for millennia however the excuse seemed to fall a little sort even in the privacy of his own mind. He was homesick and he knew it. 

He also couldn’t help but think of Jim, he could feel the connection to him when he meditated and because Jim couldn’t shield he kept getting whispers of emotion from him. It was distracting. So distracting, in fact, that his mother took notice. She walked into his room apropos of nothing and gave him one of her unreadable looks.  
“Are you settling on Earth?” He looked at her, confusedly, he was completing all the tasks expected of him. What more was there? She just sighed and continued, “What I mean by that is are you happy here? And don’t give me any bullshit, I know better.”  
Spock felt extremely uncomfortable and was glad that his father wasn’t in the room, “I am better than I was while on Vulcan, though I am not optimal.”  
She rolled her eyes but cracked a small smile, “Not optimal, indeed. Well...ok, then. If you prefer Earth, even by a technicality then we’ll stay but if that changes let me know. I will not ever let your quality of life suffer, Spock.”   
He just nodded, not knowing how to reply like always. Fortunately his mother always new when to end the conversation and leave Spock to his own devices. 

Once she’d left his room he went back to the article he’d been reading before she had interrupted him but he felt distracted. Her words had given him pause for thought. While he had been on Vulcan he had been bullied intensely to the point of practically being tormented daily. Now he was on Earth and that was over but he was utterly alone and had no real commitments of any kind. He did have his coursework but that was easily completed and it left him with more free time than he was comfortable with. Nor did he feel comfortable with wandering around San Francisco the way he did before, terrified he’d run into Jim again though he knew the chances of that were slim in such a large city. The whole situation was one that he didn’t want to dwell on and yet could not stop thinking about; Pon Farr was going to happen to him within the next ten years and it would be dangerous to be bonded to someone he couldn’t...consummate the bond with, almost as dangerous as being totally unbonded. He grimaced, he would have to go to a mind healer and have the bond dissolved next time he was on Vulcan but how could he do that without his parent's knowledge before he was an adult. He could wait till he reached majority but what if Pon Farr struck before then? It was known to happen and with his...different biology no one was certain what was going to happen, he might not even have Pon Farr. Regardless, it was best to plan for the worst case scenario. Surely the bond would be easy to destroy as it had been created spontaneously and had not been overseen by a healer. Would Jim notice if the bond was severed? Spock resolved to ask his mother about her experience of being bonded as soon as was appropriate, it would be good to do some firsthand research on the topic.

The opportunity didn’t present itself for a few days as his parents had various balls to attend as there was yet another alien society being welcomed into the Federation which he’d been told was of great importance. When it did, however, Spock found himself unwilling to take it. His lips twitched as he fought back a grimace and walked over to where she was curled up on a chair reading a book.   
“Mother,” He said so he didn’t startle her by sitting in the chair opposite her, “I have something that I want to discuss with you. I feel you will be able to enlighten me.”  
“Oh! Well, then. I’ll help you as much as I possibly can,” after a moment of silence she continued, “Go ahead, Spock.”  
“What are your experiences of being bonded to father? I know it is a slightly...taboo subject however I feel that it would not cause you undue stress.”  
She laughed, “You’re right. Vulcans are private in many things as we both know but I don’t have those same beliefs. What do you want to know?”  
“Compared to a Vulcan do you experience the same phenomena within the bond such as telepathy, awareness of your bonded’s physical and emotions state? Those sorts of things,” he explained, gaining a small measure of confidence as he spoke. He fell into his scientific cadence, it was almost as if he was truly just conducting some research and not desperately trying to find out what the experience of being bonded could be like for Jim. Spock hadn’t heard anything from the human but that didn’t mean much and besides...some of the emotions that he was receiving from Jim were distressing to say the least.  
“Obviously humans don’t have the telepathic abilities Vulcans do but even so the bond is a very strong presence in life,” for the first time in weeks she began to speak in Vulcan and Spock shivered, “the bond is in mind as a constant tether, I feel Sarek with me like he is standing by my side even if we are galaxies apart. Sarek has to initiate any telepathic communication but I can do it. We share dreams sometimes and I can easily project my emotions to him and visa versa should to need arrive. All in all, I would say that the bond would be similar to if a average Vulcan was bonded to a Vulcan that had significant weakness in their psychic abilities.”  
“That is helpful, mother,” he replied in Vulcan, the words feeling like water quenching a thirst he didn’t fully know that he had, “I was not aware that a human could participate in a bond so deeply.”  
“What makes you ask these questions, my dear one?” The Vulcan endearment a reminder of older days.  
“My bond with T’Pring was very closed and so I didn’t know what it was truly like and I...I fear that I might need use of this information.”  
“You fear it?”  
Spock winced at her perceptiveness, though he had been particularly obvious that time, “It isn’t something I wish to speak about, please respect this.”  
She looked sad for a moment but her face soon cleared and she smiled, “A man must have his secrets, even my son. Though you know you will always have a proud mother no matter what you do, and you will always have a mother that will listen to you as well. Never forget that.”  
Spock felt uncomfortable but elated, a combination he was used to feeling after conversations with his mother. When he spoke it was in Standard which effectively signaled the end of that line of conversation, “When will father return?”  
“Not for another three hours yet. And…” she said in a tone he knew to be amused, “I think I have some cooking that needs doing before he arrives. Care to help?”

He nodded and Amanda put her book down and trotted off to the kitchen with Spock following closely behind. As she set him about washing and cutting the various vegetables that would make the main staple of the soup she was making, a mix of Vulcan and human cuisine that had no name, Spock wished yet again that things could be even slightly different than they were, that he did not fall in limbo between human and Vulcan in the way that he did. He looked to his mother who was humming a tune he recognised only in that he had heard her hum it before and his heart ached in his side, she gave him the love that he shouldn’t need to survive and yet did. She knew of his weaknesses and kept them to herself, she heard him dispair at his humanity and yet never took it as an insult to her own nature. In short, she was more than he deserved. Spock just cut his carrots faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! As always any feedback you have would be appreciated as I have no beta reader. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.


	12. Across the bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spock goes snooping and gets more than he bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This kind of has some stuff from Jim’s POV which is interesting for me, definitely will do more stuff in that vain.

The days began to pass in a blur for Spock. After his conversation with his mother he found himself in an odd frame of mind. Before, he had wanted to forget that Jim existed and now...now he knew that they were connected in the same way that he and T’Pring had been, at least for the moment, and if the emotions that he were getting off of him were anything to go by Jim could use his help. 

Filled with a fresh conviction he sat down on his mat in his room one afternoon to properly meditate, and not just put his emotions in order, for the first time in days. Weeks really if he was honest with himself. When he entered his mentalscape it was a little wilder than he remembered but not really any worse for wear, the only really change being that the foliage surrounding the creek was spread a lot wider than he remembered and was a lot more dense, with new flowers growing out of the grass that had always been there. Once he’d fully settled into his new state he made his way over to the section of his wind which had once held the wall that had separated his mind from T’Pring’s, a truly giant piece of shielding, and now…

It was beautiful and Spock gasped to himself, instead of a wall it could better be described as a bridge of intertwining gold and blue threads. Spock knew that the bridge would take him to Jim’s mind but he respected his privacy not to venture across it, however he would try to assess the human’s emotional state as best as he could. The lack of shielding on Jim’s part would be especially helpful in this. He didn’t expect to be forcibly pulled from his mind and into Jim’s when he did this, however, and before he could stop it he found himself looking through Jim’s eyes and he could only hope that he wouldn’t notice the intrusion. Luckily Jim wasn’t doing anything too...private and was just sat on top of a bed scrolling through his PADD. Spock took the opportunity to look at the room that the boy was in and mentally recoiled a little at how barren and run down it looked, there were no personal effects that he knew humans liked to keep in their living spaces and there was a mold stain on the wall. He couldn’t see much as he only had access to what was in Jim’s field of view but even that was enough to disconcert him. Where was he? 

Just then the door opened and Jim’s head snapped up sharply which slightly Jarred Spock.  
“So sorry to have startled you, Jim. I was just checking how you were doing,” the words were spoken by a human woman who looked to be roughly the same age as his own mother with the same slightly greying hair.   
“Oh,” Spock could feel Jim’s lingering adrenaline, why would someone walking into his room have put him so on edge? “I’m doing ok. I’m trying to get my next place sorted.”  
The woman’s face changed and Spock couldn’t figure out the meaning of the expression, “I’m so sorry we can’t keep you here longer but you know the law.”  
“Don’t worry, I’m grateful, honestly. And it won’t be too difficult to find somewhere else, well, I hope anyway. I’m trying to find a job as well,” Jim replied and though his voice was calm and sure Spock could feel the tornado of emotions inside him: sadness, anger, fear, apprehension.   
“That’s good! You’ll find something, though obviously only part time considering your age,” she paused, “Are you sure you won’t consider going into care?”  
Jim snorted but Spock felt a spike of fear go through him, “You know I’d only escape again and besides, I’m eighteen in a few months.”  
The woman sighed, “I know. I’ll...leave you alone, then. Good luck, Jim.”  
“Thank you, Kathy,” Jim considered lightening the mood with a joke but decided to just let the woman leave. 

Now that Jim was alone again Spock suddenly grew nervous that Jim would notice his presence so he left quickly. Landing in his own mentalscape before quickly pulling himself out of that too. He had a splitting headache and was utterly exhausted, he’d never done anything like that in his life and it left him nervous and ready to sleep. 

Jim continued to be an utter mystery to Spock, however, and the information that he’d been given didn’t help him very much at all. Spock’s mouth twitched as he fought a grimace, what should he do? He had an obligation to protect his bondmate but were they truly bondmates? Surely there was more to it than just the act of being bonded, there was the relationship aspect which they had none of. His mind was whirling with thoughts though none of them were getting him any closer to a decision. Eventually he decided that he would wait and see if he got another intense burst of emotion from Jim and if he did, then he would attempt to message him and see if he would receive a reply and go from there.

It didn’t take long for that intense burst of emotion to appear, it was only the next day, in fact. This time it was so strong that Spock who had been eating breakfast had to excuse himself to the bathroom so he could collect himself lest he cry in front of his parents. Whatever was happening with Jim it was quickly becoming Spock’s problem too. Though as he found himself sat at his desk staring down at his PADD he was at an utter loss as to what to say, he couldn’t mention him seeing Jim’s conversation with that woman as it was a breach of privacy and would only make him angry but then what else could he say? I’ve been feeling you distress and I want to help, but only so I don’t have to feel it, of course? He hated talking to humans, if this situation had been with a fellow Vulcan. Well, firstly it never would have happened as it was highly illogical but secondly, he could merely send them a message to offer his assistance as that would be the most logical was to assure the optimal state for both of them. He could only wish for that type of simplicity now, however. Emotions that he had spent his entire life training himself to control flooded him constantly from Jim. Not just sadness but humour, happiness, affection, annoyance, anger-everything. It was more than he could take sometimes. Human emotions were different to Vulcan ones. If Vulcan emotions were a spear to the side, immobilising and painful then human ones were like a wave throughout his entire body, weaker but far more insidious. He felt as though these foreign emotions from Jim lived in his bones now and for the first time he wondered how his father coped with being bonded to his mother and not the other way around.


	13. Filaments

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have a chat and they play nice for once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this slightly longer update.

The vibrating of his PADD woke Spock up at approximately 2:31 in the morning, halfway through his sleep cycle. It was Jim, of course it was. The message was simple.  
‘I need your help with something.’  
Spock squinted at the PADD as he adjusted to the bright screen in the darkness. Well, that was certainly a surprise. He had been wondering how best to contact Jim for the better part of two days but this solved that particular problem nicely.  
‘What do you require?’  
There, he thought, not too rude. He hoped anyway.  
‘I don’t want to message it to you, can we meet up?’  
‘I would try to argue with you but I know it’s useless. If you just lie down I’ll come to you.’  
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ Spock could hear the tone of Jim’s voice through the message with an answering stab of confusion coming from the bond.  
‘Well I’m assuming this is something that you would prefer to talk about sooner rather than later and as we have a link I can speak to you in your mind. It will be quicker.’  
There was a very long pause and Spock almost thought that Jim had fallen asleep.  
‘Ok, I’ll lie down. You do your mental magic on me but don’t be creepy this time.’  
Spock was going to answer asking what he meant but realised that was illogical and instead moved to his medication mat and sat in his normal form. 

He didn’t bother to visualise his mentalscape this time, instead going straight to the bridge that connected their two minds. Now that he was more aware of how it worked he slowly transitioned from his mind to Jim’s. The process was difficult for him as all his telepathic training had always been with someone in the same room as him and they had been meditating also but the link seemed to make up for a lot of that, almost as if it wanted their minds to become closer. Soon enough he was on the border of Jim’s mind and he poked at it to alert Jim that he was there. There was a ripple of recognition but he seemed unable to enter the space completely but that was due to a lack of training. Spock just pulled the human’s consciousness towards him and he stepped into his mind as he did so. 

Jim’s mentalscape was nothing like his own, nothing like his had been before he’d cultivated him mentalscape, even. There was no up or down, no end, it reminded him of images of brains as the neurons shot by in burst of electricity because of the gold filament-like lights. Spock could only guess that those were his thoughts. The whole place thrummed with power which alternated made him at peace and agitated him. Jim himself looked the same as he remembered him and presumably his mental projection was wearing the same thing that the physical one was as he was in a worn-looking Federation t-shirt and sweatpants and bare feet.  
‘What is it you need to speak about, Jim?’  
Jim looked a little caught off guard and the gold filaments buzzed around more erratically for a moment, ‘I’ve been having experiences that I haven’t had since I was a child and I was hoping you’d know something about it.’  
‘Experiences?’ Spock echoed dryly.  
‘Mental experiences. As in...this evening I got into an argument with someone and shut myself in my room and I was so angry and I just want to hurt him and...and...a glass shattered. It just exploded. I was so lucky no one heard it and that none of the glass went in me. I was able to clean it up but...I haven’t thought about this stuff in so long and I thought since you were Vulcan and could do all this that you could help me.’  
Spock was shocked but knew Jim wasn’t lying, he’d felt the anger from him earlier that evening and had to excuse himself from a very important post-dinner chat that his father was having with some of his coworkers to compose himself. And even if he hadn’t felt that, Jim couldn’t lie to him here, anyway.  
‘Vulcans don’t have telepathic abilities like that, or, very few. There’s only one that I know of who could perform telekinesis but she died 368 Earth years ago. I can try to help you, I can certainly show you the techniques I use to control myself,’ he felt the odd urge to tell Jim about himself and for once he gave in to the urge, ‘When I was a small child I used to become angry a lot as I didn’t have the correct amount of emotional control for a Vulcan. When I became angry I would inadvertently mentally attack people around me causing headaches, nausea and in one case, loss of consciousness.’  
‘Wow...yeah I never had that. I just made stuff move or explode, I could never really control it which sucked. It happened a lot when I was a kid and I got into all sorts of trouble for it. Made me look like more of a freak than I already was, you know?’  
‘Yes.’  
Jim looked a little startled at that, but smiled, ‘Exactly. And I got good at stopping it and it hadn’t happened in years. I had begun to convince myself it was all just something that I made up as a kid but today it happened again. I wasn’t really that angry or anything so I’m thinking that the link might have made my mind more open to that type of stuff. I don’t want to go to the authorities with this, I’ll be treated like a lab rat. I just want to control it so I don’t do it accidentally and hurt someone, I don't like not having control over it.’  
‘That is certainly an admirable goal. I can try to help you with that,’ he hesitated, ‘I can’t promise anything, however.’  
‘No, of course not. I just can’t do it alone.’  
‘No one can, mental discipline takes time and effort and mentoring from someone else. I will help you, Jim, but I cannot promise how much good it will do.’  
Spock felt Jim appraising him for a moment and he could feel a slight amusement coming from him which was oddly addicting. It reminded him of a childhood spent longing for his mother’s laughter and yet never trying to get it but relishing it when it did happen. To have such human amusement wash over him was more than he had ever imagined being possible even in his most childish of fantasies.  
‘That works for me. When do you want to meet?’  
He pushed down an emotion he didn’t want to to name, lucky that Jim wasn’t skilled enough to sense it for himself, ‘Given that this is a serious situation I would prefer to meet as soon as possible. We should meet at 12, I can meet you at the shuttle stop and go to my apartment again as my parents are out for the day, that will give you enough time to get your required amount of sleep after we are finished.’  
‘Um...sounds good. I should get back to sleep then, or try to at least.’  
‘Try to?’  
‘Sleep never comes easily to me, why do you think we’re having this conversation right now?’  
Spock tilted his head in consideration, would it be going too far? No, he decided eventually, ‘I will help you, then. If you will permit it?’  
‘What do you want to do?’ He shot back quickly, a wave of slight fear hitting Spock from Jim.  
‘I can relax you and help you sleep, it will work especially well as I’m already in your mind.’  
‘And what about when I’m asleep? You could do anything,’ the expression on his face was blank but Spock felt his anxiety, could hear the thumping of his heart, even.  
‘I can do anything even while you’re awake.’  
‘That is not helpful!’ He yelped and Spock was yet again surprised to feel amusement. Had he made a joke without knowing it again?  
‘I have not done anything to harm you,’ purposely, at least.  
He shrugged, sticking his hands into his pockets in a futile way as their whole experience was a projection of their minds. Spock himself was wearing his meditation gear while his physical body was wearing black pyjamas. Eventually he spoke.  
‘Go on, then, let’s see if you can manage it.’

Their conversation officially over, Spock gently pushed Jim out of his mentalscape and into a more primal part of his mind deeper down. Jim was confused but went along with it and seemed to relax into it when he realised that it was sending him to sleep. Once Jim had relaxed he focused on cocooning the human in comforting sensations. It was a technique that most Vulcan parents used with their children to help them sleep and better facilitate a parental bond but sometimes partners did it also. Spock had been taught how, of course, as he would most likely need to know in the future. He hadn’t thought that he’d be using it in quite this way, however. 

It had been a little difficult to get Jim to sleep but soon enough he was curled in his subconscious, resting. Spock had even made sure to push some memories that felt happy towards him, though he didn’t look at them so he wasn’t sure what they were. Now essentially alone in Jim’s mind he felt like an interloper so he quickly made him exit out of Jim’s mind and into his own and then out of the meditative state entirely and dragged himself to bed, exhausted.

He curled up to sleep for the first time in years instead of lying straight and thought of gold filaments dancing across the back of his eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! And feedback is massively appreciated, that includes kudoses ;) 
> 
> Also look at these two cuties finally talking! Aren’t they the best? Well, I am biased but still.


	14. Mentalscapes

The hours dragged themselves along at a maddeningly slow pace and Spock found himself sat at the kitchen table again being stared down by his father, he needed to improve his emotional control if his father could sense his turmoil which, judging from the fact that he was being stared down like he was under a microscope, he most certainly could. His father had been shooting him blank looks ever since yesterday when he had practically run out of the living room where his father was talking to some colleagues of his and locked himself in the bathroom due to an emotional outburst from Jim. The anger had hit him like a kick to the chest, it shot in sparks across his eyes and he had almost gasped aloud. He hadn’t had anyone to be angry at and it had taken him a moment to realise that the emotion he was feeling was anger as it was so different to his own feelings. When Spock got angry it was like a burning in his blood that permeated his entire body and turning him into a beast as was the curse of the Vulcan people. This was different, it was certainly less intense but even so, it had come as a surprise and the urge to lash out was certainly no different. Thankfully his mother chattered away for the entirety of breakfast and soon enough they had left Spock alone to his own devices. 

Spock continued to contemplate the differences between his and Jim’s emotions as he walked down to the shuttle stop where they had agreed to meet. The walk left Spock with plenty of time to speculate what mood he’d find Jim in, it felt too rude to try to pry into his mind so he was left purely with his own guesses. 

The shuttle bus was a few minutes late but when it did speed its way towards the stop Spock easily picked Jim out of the crowd as they disembarked as he was the only one with blonde hair.   
“Hi, Spock,” he greeted warmly and Spock nodded in acknowledgement before setting off in the direction of his apartment, “Wow, you’re certainly not feeling talkative today.”  
“It is not the Vulcan way.”  
“Well,” Jim said amusedly, “you talk more in your head but I don’t think you want people to know that, do you?”   
Spock sighed, “Not as a rule, no. Vulcans like to keep that secret.”  
“That’s kind of stupid if you ask me.”   
“It’s a good thing that Surak didn’t ask you then,” he snarked, picking up his pace which Jim easily matched.   
“Who’s Surak?”   
“What do they teach you on Earth?”  
Jim huffed, “Not that. Well? Who is he?”   
“He was the one who started the revolution on Vulcan that reformed our emotions and turned us from animals to logical beings,” Spock explained.   
Jim hummed in consideration, “So he’s the reason you’re so stuffy and rude.”   
“If you must think about it like that...yes.”  
“Cool! But seriously it’s interesting to see what you’re really like under that sour face. You’re not so bad,” the link from the night before must have made the bond stronger as he got a sense of Jim’s emotions at that moment. Amusement mixed with fondness and it made Spock nervous.

Spock’s eyes widened but that was the only visible clue to an outside viewer that he was anything less than serene. Jim noticed, however, a smiled to himself and the Vulcan found the whole situation to be too much so he increased his speed so that Jim had to jog to keep up.   
“Oh don’t get so pissy, Spock! I was only teasing,” he panted out, still jogging to keep up with Spock’s quick strides. Spock found that with the lower gravity on Earth combined with his superior strength to humans meant that he had no trouble in outpacing Jim.  
“I merely wish to arrive at the apartment as soon as possible in order to expedite the process.”   
“Oh yeah, you’re practically running away from me right now to ‘expidite the process’... ok, whatever you say,” he said sarcastically. 

Thankfully Spock didn’t have to listen to Jim’s whining for much longer as they soon reached his apartment. This time the staff didn’t outwardly look shocked at his guest as Spock had made it clear to them that they weren’t to mention it to his parents. He knew his mother would find it charming and want them to spend more time together and his father would not approve and punish him, he didn’t know which was worse. Spock merely wanted to get this over with as soon as possible and get him out.

As they entered the apartment Spock gestured for Jim to follow him to his room.  
“Fuck this place is fancy, fancier than I remembered, you guys must be rich or something, right?” Jim asked as they entered Spock’s room.  
“This apartment is of average size for San Fansisco.”  
Jim ignored him, “You really love science, huh?”  
“What do you mean?”   
“Well, you have a lot of scientific equipment and things like that and I assume that paper you’re reading is a scientific one even if it is written in….Vulcan, is it?”  
“It is. And yes, I do enjoy the sciences,” Spock felt like he was breaking a rule in saying that to Jim, his father would have berated him for using the word enjoy, Vulcans aren’t meant to express such feelings outwardly.   
“I like it too, but I want to join Starfleet and become a captain. Having my own ship and travelling the universe and saving people and discovering new planets seems like a good way to spend my life. What do you want to do?”  
Spock abhorred ‘small talk’ but he knew that if he didn’t engage in it to an extent Jim would be anxious, he had learnt that both from his mother and from the papers on human social behaviour he had read.   
“I want to join the Vulcan Science Academy,” Spock replied, mind wandering to the control techniques he had been taught as a child and then later, right up to the ones that he currently used, “Meditation.”  
“Huh?”  
“That will be the first thing that we try, it is what all Vulcans are taught first in order to control ourselves. It is the most important part of our journey to emotional control, we need to start here,” Spock explained.  
“I’ve done a bit of meditation before, I’m not sure how it could help, though.”  
The Vulcan would have sighed but he stopped himself, “You really know nothing of Vulcans, our meditation is very different to the type that some humans practice.”  
“Well, Vulcans happen to be very secretive so no one knows much about you lot. Also, I haven’t been in school much so…” Jim snarked back, “Ok. What do I have to go?”  
Spock mulled it over for a moment, he would have to adjust the method to suit the human physiology but that shouldn’t be too difficult. It wasn’t as though they were going to start with anything too strenuous at first, he would have to give Jim time to adjust after all.   
“Do you see that mat over there?” Spock said and Jim nodded, “That’s my meditation mat, go over there and sit cross-legged.”  
Jim obeyed but Spock frowned, “No, your legs need to be the other way around.”  
“But that would be uncomfortable,” he complained, “How am I meant to relax if my leg is about to pop out of joint?”  
“Meditation is not about relaxation for Vulcans, it is about absolute control and mastering our own minds. This is what you wanted me to help you with, is it not?” He bit out, feeling his own annoyance mirrored with Jim’s own indignation-it was an unpleasant experience that he had never had with T’Pring. At least she had known how to shield herself.   
“Of course, this just seems a little excessive.”   
“Most things that Vulcans do seem ‘excessive’ to humans, just do as I say.”  
Jim bristled and Spock felt it scratch away at his shield like an attack but Spock easily pushed it away; it did remind of the first time he had met Jim and how powerful he had been. If this human knew how to control his powers he could be a force to be reckoned with, a weapon in the right hands. Or wrong ones.

Once Jim was sat in the proper position Spock sat opposite him.  
“I will enter a meditative state first and reach out to you with my mind, the link should help with this. All you need to do is calm your mind, sit with your eyes closed and relax,” Spock explained.  
“Ok, whatever you say, boss,” Jim was being sarcastic, Spock knew but he ignored it. 

With Jim sat trying to meditate Spock took some time to just look at him. His face was pleasing for a human, though Spock hadn’t really taken much time to evaluate such things. Jim’s features were symmetrical for the most part and there was a dusting of freckles across his nose, something no Vulcan had. In short, Jim was exotic to him. Spock was half human himself but that had no bearing on how he looked. He didn’t think of his mother as strange or exotic, of course, or even other humans he interacted with now that he was on Earth. As always Jim seemed to be different, an anomaly. 

Eventually, he stopped staring at Jim and settled in to start his own meditation. It went more easily than any meditation had for him in weeks, he didn’t want to think that was because of Jim, but then again, that was what the evidence pointed towards. 

Spock’s mentalscape was just how he left it for once and he was relieved, the constant change made him anxious as Vulcan mindscapes were only meant to be formed once and then remain the same. He pulled Jim into his mind easily as he was close in physical proximity and was trying to calm his thoughts which made them easier for Spock to manage, though still much for wild than he was used to from anyone except his mother. Not for the first time, he wondered at how his father could be so stable while bonded to a human, surely it would be too much pressure?  
“What do we do now?” Jim asked.   
“I warn you now, I will have to enter your mind and help you to order things. This will mean that I will have to have access to some of your memories and previous emotions.”  
“Didn’t you have that already?”  
“Well, technically, yes but I don’t access them,” Spock replied, “Humans really know nothing about Vulcans, do they?”  
Jim felt a bit sad, well, not sad exactly but deflated...Spock really didn’t know what word to use for it, either in Standard or Vulcan, “Oh...well...I guess that’s good to know. What do we do now?”   
“We need to travel from my mentalscape into your mind, which will be simple.”  
“Do I not have a mentalscape? Whatever that is…”   
Spock thought about how to explain it for a moment before replying, “The mentalscape has to be created and is different for every different person. It helps to separate emotions and to help us to navigate our mind and access things more quickly and easily.”  
“That sounds quite good, actually,” Jim replied.  
“Indeed...let us begin now.”

Spock was surprised at how easily Jim managed to create his own mentalscape but instead of a desert, like Spock’s and every other Vulcan’s mentalscape, it was a field of corn on a sunny day, clouds rolling across the sky lazily. It reminded Spock of when his mother would read him stories from Earth when he was very young, young enough not to hide his fascination.   
“Wow! This place is beautiful, did you make it, Spock?”  
“No, your subconscious did.”  
“That’s even better...wow…” Jim breathed. 

Spock felt odd among all the crops, he had never seen such a thing in real life. He didn’t know what made Jim create that for his mentalscape. Of course, Spock knew why the vast majority of Vulcans had deserts as their mentalscape.because of the teachings of Surak and because the entirety of Vulcan was a desert. Earth was vastly different, however, with a plethora of different habitats and biomes; this one was clearly American farming land but what link did that have to Jim? Spock could find the information out but that would be a breach of trust which Spock found himself very reluctant to do. 

He stood up straighter and met Jim’s eyes in a human show of confidence.   
“Now we need to find where you keep your psychic abilities. Ask yourself the question, if you were going to keep the physical manifestation of your mental abilities somewhere here, where would it be?” Spock asked, thinking back to how his mentor had explained it to him as a child.  
Jim frowned, “That is possibly the weirdest question I have ever been asked but ok...let me think,” he looked around him intently, “There! Under that tree!”  
“Good,” Spock transported them partially to show off, not that he would admit that, and partially just to save time, “Now you need to focus on finding the ability with your mind and on pulling it out. If you picture it already happening it works more optimally.”   
And so Jim did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh, it's been ages, hope you guys haven't forgotten about me :) also, I hope you enjoy


	15. First meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We. Are. Bonded,” he ground out, jaw clenched tight, “If you die or get hurt in any way...I don’t even want to think about what would happen to me. Like it or not we have to think about each other when making decisions. I’m not trying to control you but you cannot expect me to sit by and let you get hurt.”  
> Jim looked shocked but he wasn’t flickering anymore which Spock took as a good sign, “You make it sound like we’re married or some shit.”  
> “Being married doesn’t even compare to this, it is merely a piece of paper while this is real. Can you not feel me in your mind even when we aren’t melding? Doesn’t it feel different? Better?” Spock had never heard his voice sound like this but he was powerless to control himself.  
> “Fuck I have no idea how to respond to that. You’re super fucking weird, you know? But I am doing this regardless of what you say but...I’ll let you help me, not sure how you’ll be of any use but I’m sure I’ll figure something out,” as he spoke Jim projected newfound confidence and Spock was struck by the realisation that Jim needed to be forced to accept things. Like taming a sehlat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait for the update but this chapter is a bit longer so hopefully, that goes some way to making up for it.

It worked better and more quickly than Spock could have imagined. 

Jim’s psychic abilities were locked inside a wooden box and as it was pulled out of the ground Spock was struck with the sense that there was a lot in there, that it was powerful. He knew that, of course, he had felt Jim’s power in his own head before and had heard Jim describe his experiences but he still found himself surprised by the fact that a human could be so psychically powerful. Spock had researched into the matter, of course, and found there had been a few instances of humans being not psi-null though that was limited to a vague sense of the emotions of others or an easier time interacting psychically with psi capable species.

But if his abilities were locked away then why was Jim having these flare ups? It was then that Spock remembered something his mother once said to him.  
‘Humans aren’t like Vulcans. You know this, but you forget and your father does as well. Holding back our emotions is not healthy for us the way that it is for Vulcans, we need to let it out in a controlled way. If we don’t...well, it comes out in a much worse way. Human emotions tend to mutate into much worse things if left in the dark.’  
Spock that thought that his mother was exaggerating at the time but now he found that it made sense. For Jim, keeping those abilities hidden and not thinking about them was damaging for him and they came out anyway. He relayed his thoughts to the human who didn’t seem very happy about the revelation.  
“Well fuck, that’s not very helpful but worth a try, I suppose.”  
“Precisely, the only thing that I can think of to do for the immediate future is to try and test whether your abilities are able to be consciously controlled.”  
Jim sighed, “Well? Let’s get going then, I have somewhere to be.”  
“You do?” Spock asked, trying to gently probe Jim’s mind to see where but Jim wasn’t going to give the information up easily.  
“None of your business.”  
“Technically since we are bonded everything you do is my business, especially if it puts you in danger,” Spock countered smugly and Jim scowled, his form flickering for a moment.  
“What exactly makes you think I’m off doing something dangerous? What sort of person do you think I am?”  
“It’s not that,” Spock said, trying to deescalate the situation though he was working blind as he had no idea how to calm a human’s emotions-especially given how irrational they were, “I just got the feeling from you that you were scared to go there, intimidated.”  
“Fuck…ok, you’re not wrong but it’s just something that I have to do, ok? You might be in my mind right now but it doesn’t mean that you know everything about me, my life or the sorts of things that I have to do to keep surviving.”  
“Then tell me,” he said intensely; if another Vulcan had heard him they would have accused him of being too emotional and they wouldn’t have been wrong.  
“It’s not like you could help,” Jim said, downcast.  
“You don’t know that,” Spock walked up to the human and looked at him deep in the eyes like his mother did to him when he was a child, it was the only tactic he had but it seemed to do the trick.  
“Fine,” a long pause, “I need to go to the house of a guy I know since he has some work for me except...he’s pretty dangerous man, not the sort of person you fuck with or underestimate in any way actually.”  
“Why are you not able to get work legitimately?”  
“For someone so smart you’re kinda dumb,” Jim snorted, “One, I’m a runaway so I don’t exactly want anyone being able to track me and two, I’m not eighteen yet so any work I could find would be for shit money with limited hours. It’s easier if I do this.”  
“And what exactly is this?” Spock asked, dreading the answer. This was something that he had no idea about, he knew that Earth had far more crime than Vulcan though he knew perfectly well that he was sheltered from the extent of it. Regardless, he knew that it was likely that Jim was in not insignificant peril. The thought of him dying or being injured sent a shock of fear and anger through him, nothing would happen to his bonded if he could help it.  
“Spock?” Jim asked, “What was that? You feel...annoyed? Upset? I can’t put my finger on it.”  
“None of your concern. Besides, if you are so determined to go and get drugs to sell off of this man I am coming with you.”  
“I never said it was drugs!”  
Spock rolled his eyes, “You didn’t have to, mental connection, remember?”  
“I hate that you can hide shit and I can’t, it’s not fair. But fine...it’s not even like I’m going to be selling them, you got that much wrong. All he wants me to do is to smuggle them into the city past the police, I’m good at that.”  
“That is extremely dangerous not to mention illegal how do you honestly think that I could let you do that?”  
Jim stared at him for a moment with wide eyes before his body flickered and started to disappear, “What makes you think you have the power to make me do anything. I do what I want.”  
Spock felt Jim’s anger and it was contagious, he had been keeping himself in check for so long that he didn’t have the strength for it anymore. Quickly he rushed forward and gripped Jim by the arms tightly, pushing his energy into him and not letting him escape.  
“We. Are. Bonded,” he ground out, jaw clenched tight, “If you die or get hurt in any way...I don’t even want to think about what would happen to me. Like it or not we have to think about each other when making decisions. I’m not trying to control you but you cannot expect me to sit by and let you get hurt.”  
Jim looked shocked but he wasn’t flickering anymore which Spock took as a good sign, “You make it sound like we’re married or some shit.”  
“Being married doesn’t even compare to this, it is merely a piece of paper while this is real. Can you not feel me in your mind even when we aren’t melding? Doesn’t it feel different? Better?” Spock had never heard his voice sound like this but he was powerless to control himself.  
“Fuck I have no idea how to respond to that. You’re super fucking weird, you know? But I am doing this regardless of what you say but...I’ll let you help me, not sure how you’ll be of any use but I’m sure I’ll figure something out,” as he spoke Jim projected newfound confidence and Spock was struck by the realisation that Jim needed to be forced to accept things. Like taming a sehlat. 

Neither of them bothered to speak after that and Spock broke the connection, taking the time to enjoy not being so intensely connected, of having his mind to himself. Having to compensate for Jim’s lack of shielding was taxing-more so when he was actually inside his mind. Jim was looking around the room blearily but Spock supposed the human would find it more difficult to adjust. 

Suddenly, the door opened and his mother’s voice came calling through the apartment in Vulcan.  
“Spock, I’m back! That meeting was just too boring for me to cope with so I left. Where are you?”  
Jim looked at him with wide terrified eyes as Spock replied, “I’m in my room, I’ll be out in a moment.”  
“What did you say?” Jim hissed.  
“That is my mother, she’s home early and asked where I was. I told her and said I’ll be out soon.”  
“Fuck, I don’t think she’ll be happy to see some random person in her house. Should I escape out of the window?”  
Spock gawked at him, the first true display of emotions he’d engaged in since T’Pring had betrayed him, “That’s idiotic, you would surely die. Are you some sort of fool?”  
The human glared, “I must be to be here with you.”  
“The only thing we can do is go out there, she wants me to make friends so she will be happy to see you,” Spock explained.  
“But we’re not friends,” he replied.  
The Vulcan ignored the pain that came with what Jim said and pressed on, “She doesn’t know that. All we need to do is walk in there and get you out. Easily done.”  
“If you say so…” Jim didn’t sound sure at all but Spock took that as agreement so he walked out of his room quickly with Jim following behind, the nerves rolling off him so strongly Spock couldn’t help but feel it himself. He hoped that was the only reason why he was feeling so nervous himself, though he knew it wasn’t. 

They both made their way into the kitchen where Amanda was bustling around making herself a cup of tea, she was using her ‘special cup’ though neither Spock nor his father had any idea what made the cup so special as it had no defining features that raised it above the rest. She looked up when she heard them enter the kitchen, Jim practically hiding behind him, and raised an eyebrow.  
“Spock! Who’s this young man?” She asked, looking amused for some unknown reason.  
“This is Jim, he’s my friend,” Spock replied, feeling bashful.  
Jim stepped out from behind him and spoke, sounding more confident than he knew Jim was, “Hello, Mrs...ummm...I have no idea how to pronounce Spock’s last name and calling you Spock’s mom sounds a little childish,” he said, chuckling slightly.  
“Well that’s why you should just call me Amanda,” she replied, smiling broadly.  
Spock felt Jim relax through their bond but even without the bond he would have known the human was feeling more at ease from the fact that he was walking towards Amanda with a smile on his face, “Let me help you with the tea.”  
“What lovely manners! Would you like a cup?”  
“I would love one, thank you,” he said as they began to make the tea together, falling into step easily. Spock watched on from the other side of the kitchen.

Spock felt a stab of jealousy, how could someone that didn’t know his mother get on with her better than he did? Draw more smiles from her? Have an easier rapport? He knew it was because they were both human but he was half human as well. Why then did he feel so much less human than Vulcan? It was more than just not being raised on Earth, there was something more to it. Something that he couldn’t quite define. He had always been different and he now knew that would be the case no matter where he went. At least on Earth, he was viewed as the stereotypical Vulcan which he had never been back on his home planet. Still, he would have given it all up in that moment to be able to walk over to them and just be able to join in. It was just another thing that he wasn’t able to do.

Jim turned and looked over to him, frowning slightly.  
“Come on over, Spock. There’s no point standing there like a downtrodden statue.”  
Spock didn’t reply but walked over to the two of them and stood by them silently.  
Amanda and Jim exchanged a look in their frustratingly opaque human way of theirs, “Leave him to it,” his mother said after a moment, “He sometimes needs to be quiet.”  
Jim nodded, “I’ve noticed that.”  
“Oh yes! That reminds me, how long have you known my Spock?” The question seemed innocent but the gleam in her eye reminded Spock of all the times she’d come into his school to yell at his teachers for standing by while he was mercilessly bullied by his classmates. She would not let him be hurt again, he knew that much from the weak parental bond that they shared through his father.  
Jim sent out a spike of fear and Spock did the only thing he could, he covertly settled a hand on Jim’s back where his mother couldn’t see and projected his thoughts. Spock wished he had thought ahead enough to create a stronger link so that they could communicate telepathically without touch but it hadn’t occurred to him that they would need to do such a thing.  
‘We met at the museum a few weeks ago and have kept in touch over the internet every since as we both have an interest in the Federation, this is the first time you have come over to my house. The closer we keep it to the truth, the better. But also she won’t be happy if she knew that you had been here before without her knowing.’  
Luckily projecting that thought took less than a second and Jim took to the new sensation easily.  
“Oh, we met a few weeks ago at a museum, you know the one with all the historical rockets in? That one. I’m terrible with names so I can’t remember it,” Spock should have given the name but he would have assumed that Jim would have known it, “we got talking about space stuff and decided to keep in touch. Spock invited me round today but I thought he had told you, sorry about that.”  
“Oh don’t worry, he likes to keep secrets from me.”  
“Yeah, he does seem like the type,” Jim observed and Spock touched his back again.  
‘I don’t appreciate being spoken about as if I’m not here.’  
Jim send back amusement, clearly not able to project his thoughts yet.  
“The tea is ready,” she said, picking up the cups, one for each of them, and placing them onto a tray, “could one of you take the teapot? I’ll go set up.”  
With that, she walked away quickly into the living room, leaving the two of them alone.

“Your mother’s a nice woman,” Jim said as he picked up the teapot.  
He nodded, “Indeed,” then, feeling like he wanted to amuse Jim for some reason, “I don’t know what she saw in my father.”  
“Well, if he’s anything like you I think I can imagine…”  
Jim followed Spock’s mother out of the kitchen, leaving the Vulcan stood alone trying to work out what the human could have meant and what the rogue emotions flooding his veins could possibly be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Any feedback is always amazing to me :) love to know that real people actually read this and like it


	16. Mother knows best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, it's been so long, life has been very busy.

Of course, Jim and his mother got on famously, it was just his luck. Part of him was annoyed but another, more primal part of him took pleasure in his bondmate being accepted by his family, his clan. Though that, of course, was not something that he would ever say aloud or flow through the link between them to Jim. No, that would be far too honest and now was not the time for honesty for him. 

Eventually, Jim made his excuses and left which left Spock alone for the inevitable interrogation.   
“We don’t have much time before your father gets home so I want to ask you a few questions before then.”  
“Do I have a choice?” He grumbled even as he sat down opposite her at the kitchen table where she liked to have all of her discussions.   
“Of course, but I would be sad if you didn’t,” she said, eyes twinkling.   
Spock sighed internally and rolled his eyes minutely but didn’t reply. Jim’s influence on him must have been stronger than he thought as he never rolled his eyes normally.   
“Ok,” she continued, “how long have you known him?”  
He decided to be as truthful as he could, he was good at shielding his thoughts from his mother as it was something that all Vulcan children were taught to do as young as possible for the sake of privacy. Still, she had a knack for knowing when he was lying and he didn’t want to take any chances, “Not very long, only a few weeks. We met at the museum. Also, you already asked Jim and he said the same thing thus your question is redundant.”  
“Oh wow! You didn’t say anything. And I ask because maybe you would have said something different.”  
“You didn’t ask,” Spock retorted coolly, feeling a lot calmer.   
“You get that sneakiness off of your father, I swear,” she said, tilting her head back and laughing, clearly remembering something that Spock had no idea about, “No one from my side of the family is anything like that!”  
“Mother, please stop disparaging me. I merely did not inform you because I didn’t think it was important and now you know, so there’s no problem.”  
“That makes no sense at all but I’ll let it go just because I know I won’t be able to get anything more out of you.”  
“He’s not untrustworthy if that’s what your thinking,” he replied and he wasn’t sure if that was a lie, honestly. All the business with the drugs certainly didn’t make it easy to judge.   
“That wasn’t what I was thinking at all, I was merely thinking that...well...after T’Pring that you would-”  
“What?” Spock interrupted, “Bond with him? I’m not…” what was he going to say? Like you? Like Sarek?   
Whatever he omitted, his mother seemed to understand him perfectly as she always did. Her face crinkled in unmistakable main, “There is nothing wrong with that, you know? Nothing wrong with you, Spock. I know that people haven’t made it easy for you to believe that but…” she switched to Vulcan as if speaking in English was too emotional for her, “I love you and you are not a mistake.”  
“I…” he didn’t know what to say, there was no way that he could reply without letting his emotions out. Those were the words that he had wanted to hear for so many years but now they felt almost hollow to him, he was supposed to be beyond such things.   
“You don’t need to say anything but...Spock, I’ve only met Jim for a short time but I can tell he’s the best thing that has happened to you in months, years perhaps. You seemed, freer, more comfortable,” she said, “happy,” she continued in Vulcan and the pure emotion of the word hit him right in the side, “I really think that he is good for you. Now I don’t know if that is romantic in nature or not but...you know as well as I do the consequences if you don’t find someone.”  
Spock sighed and looked away, unable to meet her eyes, “You don’t need to worry about that, I have time.”  
“We don’t know that!” She sounded strained, though Spock was still not looking at her, “You’re not full-blooded Vulcan which means that we don’t know when you’ll go into Pon Farr or if you will at all. I just don’t like taking chances with these things.”  
“I am handling things, please let me live my own life,” anger was prickling at the corners of his awareness but he pushed the feeling back, he promised himself that he would never get angry with his mother.   
“I’m sorry but as a mother, it kills me to watch you in danger like this. I know for you it doesn’t feel like a pressing issue but I promise you it is. Pon Farr is deadly, you haven’t seen it but it is called The Burning for a reason,” the switch to Vulcan was natural but it only made her word affect him more.   
Spock crumpled under the guilt of all that he was keeping from her but it wasn’t only his secret, “I will find someone on Vulcan. I need someone who can help me and I will find that person.”  
“We don’t know when we’ll be going back to Vulcan, not really,” she sighed and looked at her feet before continuing, her hands clasped together, “Allow your mother to worry, Spock as it seems to me that you don’t worry enough.”

The conversation left Spock feeling bereft somehow and inordinately guilty, though the guilt was deserved. If he could have his own way he would tell his mother, of course, but it wasn’t his decision. Then again, what was his plan with regards to his bond with Jim? Neither of them had really spoken about it and Spock hadn’t mentioned that it was technically reversible. Spock had been pushing his own thoughts about their bond to the back of his mind fastidiously, the thoughts of telling anyone was too much for him but equally, there was no way that he could keep it secret forever. 

A more pernicious thought tugged at the edges of his awareness and didn’t let go no matter how much he tried to ignore it. Namely that he didn’t want to end the bond, didn’t want to give Jim up which scared him. He had never felt that way about T’Pring even though they had been bonded for years. Jim frustrated and annoyed him and asked questions that he didn’t want to answer but he was also smart and had such a unique way of looking at the world that he found it almost addictive. Spock knew that in a way it was selfish, neither of them had asked for the bond but Jim had asked for it least of all. 

Spock had been putting off researching the phenomenon of spontaneous bonding for long enough, of course, he knew some things about it but none of that had helped him so he needed to look into it. If he was back on Vulcan he could go to any one of the libraries there and access the majority of the records there using his father’s clearance code that he had stolen from him years ago without his knowledge. On Earth, however, he was limited to what had been uploaded to the Galactic Database and given how secretive the Vulcan people were they didn’t upload much to the GD at all. He also didn’t want his father finding out about his research and so he would have to be very careful. 

Well, he certainly had the time to do his research before helping Jim with his...task. Spock sighed and ran a hand through his hair, glad that he was alone in his room otherwise his father would have told him off, his habit of running his hand through his hair was certainly not Vulcan-like, time to get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always I hope you enjoy and any comments or kudoses are always appreciated.


End file.
